Charles: Too much spent on Strategic Services Agency

NAPARIMA MP Rodney Charles on Monday accused the Government of dubious big-ticket allocations in its national security budget, such as $270 million to the spy unit, the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), but not properly funding measures for people's daily safety, such as lifeguards and fire trucks.

He was speaking in the budget debate in the House of Representatives, just after Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds.

Charles said the fire service, across the whole country, has only ten sets of breathing apparatus.

"We have 11 stations in North Trinidad, but only six have tenders."

He said the newly-elected head of the Prison Officers Association, Gerald Gordon, had dubbed the maximum security prison (MSP) "a ticking time bomb," owing to ageing infrastructure such as its alarm system and air-conditioning.

"Year after year we get the PNM list, 'We doing this, we doing that,' but the equipment never reaches the Prison Service," Charles said.

"Yet today we hear the minister giving us the list of all the things they are doing and they are not doing one thing to improve the security of Trinidad and Tobago. It is hard to take.

"Nothing in this budget to address these issues at the maximum security prison, only one meagre allocation for the MSP for an alarm system."

Charles also addressed the SSA.

"I want the minister of national security to give me an undertaking that the SSA does not spy on members of this Parliament. I want a yes or no, not an obfuscatory answer."

House leader Camille Robinson-Regis complained at the statement, which Deputy Speaker Esmond Forde asked Charles to rephrase.

Charles complied: "Could someone somewhere give us an undertaking that our e-mails and phones are not monitored by the SSA?"

He said the SSA will get $270 million in its budget allocation, up by $20 million from last year.

"Something is not right with the SSA's budget."

Charles said the Lifeguards Association said last week no lifeguards were patrolling TT's beaches. owing to dilapidated accommodation and lack of transport, amid a staff shortage.

"Our national security personnel beg, they cry, and they bawl for the same things every year, begging this Government to do the job for which they are paid handsomely. They are repeatedly disregarded."

He said the Government was incompetent in allocating funds.

"They are versed in fancy talk. It is no wonder that systems are failing miserably."

Charles knocked the Government for allegedly prioritising crime suppression over crime prevention and criminal rehabilitation.

He alleged that instead of preventing citizens becoming criminals, the PNM administration had used crime as" a money-making enterprise to fill the pockets of friends and financiers," with millions paid to take prisoners to court and millions spent on legal briefs exempt from procurement oversight.

Amid this expenditure, Vision on Mission, a rehabilitation NGO for ex-prisoners, got a budget cut this year, he lamented.

"$50,000 for the 4H clubs, but $270 million for the SSA!

"Police youth clubs, $1.5 million, but you could find money for the SSA!"

Charles said the Government had caused irreparable damage to TT's international image.

He said TT needs port scanners and a 24/7 active coast guard to stop the influx of illegal guns, rather than the Prime Minister appealing to the US Government for help in his recent speech at the UN General Assembly.

"It is our job and our job alone to secure our borders."

Charles said the US in its July travel advisory had downgraded TT to level three, telling its citizens to reconsider travel to TT owing to crime.

"In other words they are telling their citizens, 'Do not come to TT, because of the ineptitude of the Minister of National Security.'

"Is it true four Saudi diplomats were robbed in Port of Spain in June?"

He said the US State Department, in its 2022 report, lamented corruption and human trafficking in TT, while the country was on a European Union (EU) blacklist for tax evasion. Denmark had terminated its double taxation agreement with TT, soon to be followed by non-EU nation Norway.

Charles said the EU has further downgraded TT's status over illegal fishing, from a "yellow card" to a "red card."

He lamented that this had happened, despite TT having previously had a very high status at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, in the persons of the late Lennox Ballah and retired justice Anthony Lucky. "Today we are on a red flag for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing."

"Disrepair and abandonment" were now the order of the day, he charged.

He said the Government was versed at spending money without reaping any benefit. Charles alleged two government ministers from 2015-2022 had respectively been paid substantial per diems for official overseas travel of about $800,000 and $1.5 million, payable in foreign currency.

Charles said after the Government spent $3.4 million on a Caricom crime symposium, TT had got no crime plan nor drop in murders.

Asking why TT had to fund Caricom leaders to visit the symposium, he alleged bribery, but Forde required him to retract that description.

"If you ask them about it, we'll get a list of talk. But they will not tell you that 'Because we had that conference, the murder rate declined by ten per cent.'"

In contrast to TT, Jamaica recently had a notable drop in crime, he said.

Charles lamented that some $999,000 had been spent to buy 20 wooden ladders for the fire service at $50,000 each. He noted the sum was just under $1 million, seemingly alluding to the floor at which procurement oversight is triggered.

"I want to tell the Government, I will make the wooden ladders for $10,000 (each), so you will save $40,000."

He cited a Venezuelan and expat citizen, both recent crime victims, lamenting how bad crime was in TT.

Charles ended by saying the Government was on its way out, singing a line by the late crooner Brooke Benton: "It's just a matter of time!".