US Ambassador wrong

TRADE MINISTER Ken Valley yesterday said United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Dr Roy Austin could be wrong about the influence of US criminal deportees on the levels of crime in TT. On Sunday, Austin said US deportees do not “contribute significantly to increasing crime rates in TT.”

Speaking with reporters at Riverside Plaza, Valley said: “I don’t know whether the US Ambassador has any statistics but especially in the area of kidnapping, which is new to us in TT, I would think that  deportees may account for a large part of what is happening here. I have met some of them (deportees). They left Trinidad at five or what have you. They don’t know anything about Trinidad. They got themselves in trouble in the US and they are put on a plane and sent home without anything. There must be some system to allow for adjustment back into society. If you don’t do it somebody else will. Before we had deportees we did not have kidnapping. Now we have deportees and we have kidnapping. There is a causal relationship.”

The Minister said the former UNC regime had no proper system to monitor deportees or keep them out of criminal activities, and this was one reason why Government was dealing heavily with the social aspects of crime in addition to law enforcement. Former Legal Affairs Minister Camille Robinson-Regis had suggested including fingerprints as part of national ID cards in order to monitor the deportees’ activities. Valley added that Government’s commitment to fighting crime “is one of the reasons that I’m sure that the Prime Minister made certain adjustments with respect to that in his Cabinet.”

However, Valley said this was not a condemnation of Howard Chin Lee’s performance as National Security Minister and denied that kidnappings increased exponentially under Chin Lee. He noted there were kidnappings before Chin Lee was a Minister. The Minister dismissed suggestions that TT would be bypassed for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Secretariat due to an increase in murder rates in 2002. “I doubt that our situation is worse than Miami (also in the running for the FTAA Secretariat) or New York. I don’t think that even if that statistic is worse than Miami a decision will be based on that and only on that,” Valley stated. The Minister also spoke of discussions among Caricom leaders for “hassle-free travel” in the region and new mechanisms being examined in that regard. Valley leaves today for Miami where he will attend the FTAA Ministerial Meeting due to be held there on November 21.