Oropouche West MP, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, has raised the alarm over the num­ber of peo­ple be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing in the coun­try.

He al­so said if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty the Op­po­si­tion can have a han­dle on crime with­in 100 days.

Dur­ing the UNC’s me­dia brief­ing at its Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Tan­coo ze­roed in on crime and blamed the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led PNM gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to pro­tect cit­i­zens in the face of grow­ing vi­o­lence. 

When asked how long it will take a UNC gov­ern­ment, if elect­ed, to get crime un­der con­trol, Tan­coo pro­vid­ed a time­line of just over three months.

“With­in the first 100 days of a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, we will be able to do the things that were an­nounced pre­vi­ous­ly. The leader of the Op­po­si­tion an­nounced sev­er­al plans in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ty com­fort pa­trols, leg­is­la­tion to en­sure more per­sons have ac­cess to le­gal firearms, stand your ground leg­is­la­tion, in­creased fund­ing to the DPP’s of­fice and Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, Po­lice Ser­vice and Prison Ser­vice,” he said.

Tan­coo added there were “low-hang­ing fruit” items that a gov­ern­ment was ca­pa­ble of do­ing with­in days to as­sist in crime re­duc­tion. 

The Op­po­si­tion MP not on­ly lament­ed the spate of gun vi­o­lence but al­so point­ed to the wor­ry­ing trend of peo­ple be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing.

“In my own con­stituen­cy of Oropouche West from Su­chit Trace a busi­ness­woman, Christi­na Ad­sette has been miss­ing since Sep­tem­ber last year with not a clue to be found. Does any­one re­mem­ber Ria Sookdeo who was dragged scream­ing from her ve­hi­cle in 2019 and up to to­day has not been found? Re­cent­ly a young fa­ther, fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er and con­sul­tant Ko­mal Ma­haraj went miss­ing. Have you no­ticed the num­ber of per­sons be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing al­most dai­ly? What is be­ing done to find these peo­ple? What sup­port is be­ing giv­en to their dis­tressed fam­i­lies?” he asked.

Tan­coo al­so rub­bished re­cent claims by the Prime Min­is­ter that the Op­po­si­tion was re­spon­si­ble for dri­ving away in­vestors. He said it was not the UNC but the crime rate that was the de­ter­rent.

“Which in­vestor will want to come here un­der these cir­cum­stances? This has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the Op­po­si­tion. It has every­thing to do with the PNM, Kei­th Row­ley, Colm Im­bert, Regi­nald Ar­mour, Fitzger­ald Hinds and the pack of them and their com­plete and ut­ter fail­ure in pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens in­clud­ing busi­ness­men,” Tan­coo said.

Sobers wants Scot­land in TTPS road­block

Mean­while, for­mer Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Sean Sobers dis­missed claims that the UNC was keen on wit­ness­ing the coun­try fail. He al­so called on the new­ly in­stalled Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, to make his pres­ence felt in his ef­forts to­wards crime re­duc­tion.

“I want to see Min­is­ter Scot­land on a boat with the coast­guard of­fi­cials run­ning down peo­ple when they come in­to this coun­try il­le­gal­ly. I want to see Min­is­ter Scot­land on a road­block as­sist­ing the TTPS when they do­ing road­blocks, I want to see Minis­er Scot­land en­gag­ing the TTPS at all hours of the night en­sur­ing they have the rel­e­vant re­sources and tools to fight crime. I don’t want some­one who sits in an ivory tow­er giv­ing out in­struc­tions and not see­ing those in­struc­tions fol­lowed through,” Sobers said.

Last Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that Scot­land, MP for Port-of-Spain South, would be made a Min­is­ter in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry re­spon­si­ble for the TTPS.

Scot­land was sworn in on Fri­day and promised to hit the ground run­ning. He said high on his agen­da was re­build­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice.