[UPDATED] Moonilal: Planned $100m for crime 'will go to gangs'

ON the heels of the Prime Minister's announcing that the Government is set to allocate $100 million to help fight crime, an opposition MP has charged that the money is to be used to fund gangs.

“I put it to you: this money is for the gangs. The gangsters today are salivating at the prospect of $100 million coming our way while the police are cussing that they do not have water. They do not have basic equipment. They do not have ink, paper and diary books,” Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal said.

Moonilal added that the Prime Minister had pulled $100 million from a hat and gave no details.

Moonilal spoke at a press conference at midday on January 19 at the Office of the Opposition in Port of Spain.

The theme was: A Nation under Siege and a Prime Minister without Solutions.

“Without any doubt of contradiction... this is a joke. A $100 million for who and for what? This is really some type of security service geriatric programme,” Moonilal said. “It is old man and youthman trying to go into the communities where young gangsters have AK-47 automatic and semi-automatic rifles.”

On the night of January 18 at a PNM public meeting in San Juan, party leader Dr Keith Rowley said he would soon instruct Finance Minister Colm Imbert to allocate $100 million to be spent by the TT Defence Force in crime hotspots.

Moonilal charged that Rowley was frothing at the mouth, targeting the Opposition at the meeting.

Moonilal is also the shadow minister for national security, works and transport and housing.

He said while the Government intends to put $100 million “in the hands of gangsters," the electronic monitoring bracelets are poor quality.

Without giving details, he cited the human-trafficking case in which a man removed the device in September and absconded. The man was convicted in absentia and remains on the run.

“I think he bite it or take it out. It was plastic, inferior material. They have not spent money to buy high-quality electronic monitoring bracelets for people convicted or on bail,” Moonilal said. “They have bought inferior materials so that today, a poodle dog can bite out the electronic bracelets from your ankle. They will not spend the money on that.”

Moonial called on Rowley not to "wash his mouth" on anybody who came to a UNC meeting and raised issues about the management of the police service.

Rowley, on January 18, at a press conference in Port of Spain, defended Police Commissioner (CoP) Erla Harewood Christopher from criticisms by retired snr supt Johnny Abraham.

At the UNC’s anti-crime meeting on Monday, Abraham said the police had no leadership.

In response, Rowley charged that Abraham ridiculed the top cop on a political platform and added that the statements rotted his guts. Rowley said if he was Abraham, he would have shut his mouth.

“Whatever you may think of them, you ought not to be speaking and attacking retired police officers in this manner. You may not agree with his point of view, but you ought not to be attacking him,” Moonilal said. “There are stories upon stories and files upon files of senior police who have questions to answer to this day about drugs disappearing, prisoners escaping and pigtail buckets full of money 'escaping.'"

He said a former PNM administration appointed some of these people.

Moonilal also accused the PM of being guilty of talking and taking no action.

“Inaction and distraction are the only actions he knows. He and the Government take no responsibility and blame everyone except themselves for the state of the country.”

He reiterated that neither Rowley nor National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds gave hope to the nation at the meeting.

Hinds and Rowley are frustrated by their inaction and incompetence in dealing with crime and have now erupted into a vile pattern of conduct, language and behaviour, he argued.

At the PNM public meeting, former CoP Gary Griffith was dubbed “G-string,” and accused of being a little noise-maker.

Moonilal charged that Hinds had been out of the public domain for a month and had last been sleeping at the funeral of former prime minister Basdeo Panday.

“Then he appears last evening after being tranquilised, attacking Griffith,” Moonilal said.