Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion from Prime Min­is­ter and head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Dr Kei­th Row­ley, to at­tend a meet­ing to dis­cuss crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in To­ba­go to­day.

The meet­ing will be host­ed at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices, in Scar­bor­ough.

Au­gus­tine re­ceived the in­vi­ta­tion on Ju­ly 5 for the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty coun­cil meet­ing sched­uled to be held in To­ba­go to­mor­row. This in­vi­ta­tion fol­lows a re­quest made by Au­gus­tine in Jan­u­ary to dis­cuss the ris­ing lev­els of crim­i­nal­i­ty on the is­land.

The in­vi­ta­tion al­so comes af­ter an ear­li­er meet­ing held with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds in April.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said he was grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent To­ba­go’s is­sues at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing. Au­gus­tine said that the mat­ter of crime af­fects all mem­bers of so­ci­ety equal­ly, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal be­liefs.

“As an is­land and coun­try, we must work to­geth­er in this fight against crim­i­nal el­e­ments in so­ci­ety,” he said.

The up­com­ing meet­ing aims to ad­dress the ur­gent need for ef­fec­tive strate­gies to en­hance safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in To­ba­go. It is sus­pect­ed that the pro­posed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) po­lice unit will be on the agen­da.

In June, dur­ing Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary, Row­ley re­vealed that he had asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to look in­to mak­ing “man­age­able amend­ments” to the THA Act to pave the way for a THA po­lice force. He was clear that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty on the is­land would still be the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Fif­teen years ago, a sim­i­lar pro­pos­al (the To­ba­go Po­lice Bill) was too com­pli­cat­ed, but now Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment was aim­ing for sim­pler changes sim­i­lar to those made for Trinidad’s mu­nic­i­pal po­lice.

Row­ley spoke about the im­por­tance of pre­vent­ing crime in To­ba­go and urged res­i­dents to do all in their pow­er to re­duce crime’s im­pact. At that time, Row­ley pub­licly ac­knowl­edged Au­gus­tine’s re­quest for a meet­ing to dis­cuss crime but not­ed that ac­tion was up to the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice.

He said that while both par­ties can en­gage in am­i­ca­ble dis­cus­sions, it is ul­ti­mate­ly up to the com­mis­sion­er to take re­al ac­tion against crime.

In the THA’s $3.95 bil­lion bud­get re­quest in June, Au­gus­tine, who was fi­nance sec­re­tary at the time, bud­get­ed funds for the es­tab­lish­ment of the is­land’s po­lice unit. The unit is ex­pect­ed to be formed by the end of 2024.