KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has be­gun a se­ries of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on pro­posed Stand Your Ground leg­is­la­tion.

It comes ahead of the draft­ed bill’s de­bate in Par­lia­ment, sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

While the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion has sparked wide­spread de­bate, draw­ing both praise and crit­i­cism across the coun­try, one gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor says the ini­tial feed­back had been pos­i­tive from res­i­dents in East Trinidad.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Sen­a­tor Dr Na­tal­ie Chai­tan-Ma­haraj said dozens of peo­ple who at­tend­ed the con­sul­ta­tion in Five Rivers on Sun­day ex­pressed sup­port for the bill be­ing passed.

She not­ed that res­i­dents viewed the bill as a step to­ward re­claim­ing their sense of safe­ty and felt it could serve as a de­ter­rent to vi­o­lent crime.

Chai­tan-Ma­haraj said, “It was re­ceived pos­i­tive­ly with peo­ple ap­pre­ci­at­ing the abil­i­ty to be able to de­fend them­selves. That is the ba­sis for the bill, so we look for­ward to that. We ap­pre­ci­ate their pos­i­tive re­sponse and we take it go­ing for­ward. There was no neg­a­tive con­cern. There wasn’t any­one who wasn’t in favour of the bill, so they were urged to con­tin­ue to gree­tread it and di­gest. It went as ex­pect­ed. We had con­stituents come out and they were able to voice their con­cerns and have their ques­tions an­swered. We were joined by AG John Je­re­mie for the ses­sion as well. No hic­cups. I think I’m hap­py with the out­come and we go for­ward for the rest of the con­stituen­cies to fin­ish their con­sul­ta­tions as well.”

An­oth­er pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is sched­uled to be held at the Barataria Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre at 6 pm to­day.

Ef­forts to con­tact Je­re­mie were fu­tile yes­ter­day.