UNC Senator hits government over derelict police cars

OPPOSITION Senator Jayanti Lutchmedial-Ramdial lamented a lack of police vehicles patrolling the nation's streets, chiding the government for both poor acquisition and poor maintenance of these. She spoke in the Senate budget debate on October 22, lamenting the upsurge in violent crime.

Asking if the government was keeping people safe at night, she said the answer was a resounding no.

"Last year they promised 1,000 vehicles," she related. "This year they came back and said, 'No, it is 2,000.'"

Lutchmedial-Ramdial lamented a big scrapyard of police vehicles at Wallerfield plus a yard full of derelict vehicles at Marabella.

She said the Vehicle Maintenance Company (Vmcott) has experienced a lot of difficulty to collect payments for its work done on for various state agencies.

"The government is not paying government who then have to remit taxes to government. They are in a mess."

She lamented the government was now talking of buying 2,000 new vehicles but had not mentioned how to maintain old cars. She said the latter idea was better value than the former.

Lutchmedial-Ramdial said the government had hosted a conference on crime as a public heath issue, only for Trinidad and Tobago to end up with 12,000 illegal firearms in the street, according to data from the Strategic Services Agency (SSA). She blamed the entry of illegal firearms on the breakdown of container scanners at legal ports of entry plus the Coast Guard's shortcomings in patrolling illegal ports of entry. She said the Coast Guard now has only one patrol vessel working.

Lutchmedial-Ramdial related that mobile scanners were deemed "too expensive" to maintain and soon afterwards were pulled from service.

She said each day that passed without scanners on the port provided a new chance for children to be shot.

Lutchmedial-Ramdial then said the people murdering Trinidad and Tobago's children did not possess firearm users licences (FULs).

Mulling how much money the government has spent investigating the issuance of FUL's, she hit, "They cannot show a single thing to secure our borders." Lutchmedial-Ramdial earlier accused the government of lacking the kindness that she said characterised Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

Referring to the "milk grant" which Persad-Bissessar had introduced, she chided the government whom she said do not understand that the grant was the difference between an older child getting to go to school or staying home and joining a criminal gang.

A future UNC government will restore Trinidad and Tobago to paradise she said, such as by finding funds by eliminating public wastage and corruption.

She said the government had brought legislation on three occasions to water down the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act. The former government had given Trinidad and Tobago its lowest crime rate in 30 years, said Lutchmedial-Ramdial.