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Friday, July 25, 2025

PM: Rotating ministers is not crime solution

by

963 days ago
20221205
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley addresses supporters during the PNM’s 50th convention at the  Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley addresses supporters during the PNM’s 50th convention at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is not yield­ing to calls to re­place Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, af­ter he presided over the coun­try’s high­est ever mur­der rate in a cal­en­dar year. 

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM’s) 50th Con­ven­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day evening, Dr Row­ley ac­knowl­edged that the coun­try’s record mur­der count this year was a cause for con­cern for his Gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens but claimed that a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle was not the so­lu­tion. 

“I have seen it said that this can be rec­ti­fied by sim­ply ro­tat­ing min­is­ters or politi­cis­ing the crime-fight­ing ef­forts,” he said.

“All this will do, as it has been do­ing, is to em­bold­en the crim­i­nals who be­lieve that the rest of the coun­try does not have what it takes to bring the law­less­ness un­der con­trol,” he added. 

De­spite his state­ment on the is­sue, Dr Row­ley did ad­mit that new crime-fight­ing poli­cies and ini­tia­tives were need­ed to ad­dress the peren­ni­al is­sue. 

“The po­lice and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are per­ma­nent­ly en­gaged in crime de­tec­tion and sup­pres­sion but clear­ly the cur­rent sys­tems and meth­ods are not suf­fi­cient­ly ro­bust to bring the lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty that the pop­u­la­tion de­mands and de­serves,” Dr Row­ley said. 

Stat­ing that his gov­ern­ment was not pre­pared to con­cede the fight against crim­i­nal el­e­ments, Dr Row­ley said that he and his Cab­i­net would con­tin­ue to pro­vide re­sources to law en­force­ment agen­cies and the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

He al­so promised to con­tin­ue to im­prove the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and pro­vide pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ties for vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple. 

“We will con­tin­ue to grow the econ­o­my so that job op­por­tu­ni­ties will con­tin­ue to be­come avail­able and we will en­cour­age and sup­port fam­i­lies to steer their sib­lings and prog­e­ny away from a life of crime and away from the clutch­es of the re­cruiters to a life of crime,” he said. 

Dr Row­ley spent the ma­jor­i­ty of his lit­tle over an hour-long speech fo­cus­ing on his gov­ern­ment’s nu­mer­ous “achieve­ments” in their two terms of of­fice, which be­gan in 2015. 

He made spe­cial em­pha­sis on the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, its fis­cal poli­cies, and its stance on in­creas­ing the range and reach of so­cial pro­grammes de­spite eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. 

He al­so claimed that his gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to bring a fi­nal res­o­lu­tion to the bil­lion-dol­lar bailout of CL Fi­nan­cial and its sub­sidiaries were its biggest achieve­ment in of­fice. 

Dr Row­ley al­so did not steer clear of his usu­al sharp cri­tique of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), who he ac­cused of re­peat­ed­ly at­tempt­ing to de­rail and sab­o­tage his gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tives. 

“We know that they have an over­flow­ing reser­voir of neg­a­tive vibes to draw from. There is al­so their co­pi­ous streams of dis­re­spect, vul­gar­i­ty, in­sults, and in­vec­tives but where are their use­ful al­ter­na­tives?” Dr Row­ley said. 

In his wide-rang­ing speech, Dr Row­ley al­so sought to ad­dress salary ne­go­ti­a­tion with pub­lic ser­vants, which is cur­rent­ly be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court. 

While Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted that the gov­ern­ment’s four per cent of­fer for 2014 to 2019 was not re­ceived with en­thu­si­asm by trade union lead­ers, he ex­pressed hope that the mat­ter would be quick­ly re­solved so that thou­sands of pub­lic ser­vants can re­ceive the up­dat­ed ben­e­fits. 

“I am per­son­al­ly grate­ful that more and more mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ee groups are see­ing it pos­si­ble to ac­cept the of­fer on the ta­ble as the best for the mo­ment, in the hope that the next pe­ri­od could be ne­go­ti­at­ed quick­ly and if the na­tion­al for­tunes con­tin­ue to im­prove then a bet­ter of­fer may be on the hori­zon to get us all back to the hope­ful end of a rel­a­tive­ly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od,” Dr Row­ley said. 


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