Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

More than a year af­ter it was first in­tro­duced, the Gov­ern­ment will again be seek­ing to de­bate a pro­posed law to in­sti­tute poly­graph and drug test­ing for mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and cer­tain of­fices in the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice and the civ­il ser­vice.

It is on the agen­da as Par­lia­ment re­turns to reg­u­lar work to­mor­row af­ter­noon, af­ter sev­er­al weeks of de­bate on the 2024 Bud­get.

Apart from the whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion, among the bills list­ed on the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives agen­da for to­mor­row is one for poly­graph and drug test­ing and bio­met­ric iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for po­lice, pris­ons, fire, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers, sol­diers and oth­ers.

It was first pre­sent­ed in 2022 but the de­bate re­mained in­com­plete. The bill seeks to amend the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Act, Chap. 6:01, the Prison Ser­vice Act, Chap. 13:02, the De­fence Act, Chap. 14:01, the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, Chap. 15:01, the Civ­il Ser­vice Act, Chap. 23:01, the Fire Ser­vice Act, Chap. 35:50 and the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act, Chap. 72:01.

It re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage. Sources ex­pect that be­cause of a "sav­ings clause” moved by the Gov­ern­ment, the de­bate may sim­ply con­tin­ue from where it left off last year.

An Op­po­si­tion source said the bill be­ing de­bat­ed to­mor­row is the “ex­act bill as 2022 and if the Gov­ern­ment had been re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in it, they should have pur­sued it to the vote stage then or should have ne­go­ti­at­ed and amend­ed it based on the sug­ges­tions in the 2022 de­bate”.

The source couldn’t say whether or not it would be sup­port­ed, since the UNC need­ed to hear the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion and whether amend­ments would be made to is­sues raised be­fore.

Af­ter be­ing first pre­sent­ed in Jan­u­ary 2022, the bill was de­bat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2022 with con­tri­bu­tions by sev­en speak­ers, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who pi­lot­ed the leg­is­la­tion, then-At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les. Op­po­si­tion speak­ers were MPs Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Arnold Ram and Rod­ney Charles.

Ram­bal­ly had said it was very dif­fi­cult to sup­port the bill and point­ed out that in­tegri­ty test­ing was dif­fer­ent from poly­graph­ing and the “sci­ence was against poly­graph­ing”. He com­mend­ed drug test­ing in prin­ci­ple but called for suf­fi­cient safe­guards for the route of bio­met­ric da­ta.

The bill lapsed in that sec­ond ses­sion of the Par­lia­ment but dur­ing the Bud­get de­bate in Oc­to­ber 2022, Hinds called on the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port the bill, which would have been tak­en to Par­lia­ment again.

It was placed on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da for the third ses­sion in late 2022 to Ju­ly 2023 but was not de­bat­ed.

Hinds had said then that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry had man­dat­ed that prop­er and com­plete vet­ting be done when re­cruit­ing new law en­force­ment mem­bers and that was why the bill for poly­graph test­ing would be rein­tro­duced.

In 2019, then Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith sup­port­ed poly­graph test­ing and said he had set an ex­am­ple by vol­un­teer­ing to be test­ed first. He al­so said he had planned to in­tro­duce ran­dom drug test­ing with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

At that time, the TT Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) didn’t sup­port the pro­posed new pa­ra­me­ters for poly­graph test­ing. Yes­ter­day, TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son said, “Our po­si­tion re­mains the same.”