Minister loses his cool over crime, kidnapping and fire

Joseph, who started out fairly calm, became a bit testy as he was asked repeatedly about the lack of readiness of the Fire Services Division to deal with Saturday’s fire in the capital city.

"The Ministry of National Security finds itself in a situation where it is moving — I don’t want to say from crisis to crisis. But over the last few months we have been focusing on gang-related homicides, kidnapping and your eye gets off the ball — the fire ball — and when you are assuming that various things are happening like hyrants being checked etc, only to realise (that things are not under control)." He added quickly that this was not "an excuse."

Under pressure, Joseph also lamented that ministers were "nice sitting targets" (for blame). "We have a way we like to blame and point fingers," he said, adding: "The buck stops with me. But if you are giving me accountability, then give me the authority to take action. And if I decide to take action, I (hope I) am not stymied by judicial review or various types of thing. It is easy for us to say certain things and when you are holding people accountable and they can’t even transfer somebody, they can’t take any kind of action with respect to performance or non-performance."

Joseph said he could not ascribe blame until a post-mortem — which is being held today at 3 o’clock — was done. He said he understood the outrage the public felt since people were entitled to expect a certain standard from authorities. "Something went wrong on Saturday. I am not yet in a position to determine who is responsible for what went wrong. But we are going to determine that, and whatever measures need to be taken to prevent similar occurrences in the future, will be taken," he said.

He said he believed that if there was another fire today the Fire Services Division would be in a better position to respond.

Joseph said $168 million was approved for expenditure for the Fire Services in the last Budget. And he added that when there was a fire in Point Fortin, the Prime Minister summoned him and Cabinet approved a further "$60-something million." He said the challenge Government faced was that while there may be approvals for firefighting equipment, one didn’t get them overnight because they were very specialised, and had to be manufactured after an order was placed.

"I hope when it is necessary for us to do certain fast-tracking to make sure all concerns are addressed, we are not accused of violating the process," Joseph said.

He said Saturday’s fire would give the ministry an opportunity to do a comprehensive review of the whole state of play. On the crime situation, Joseph again reiterated that "we are going to get on top of that." He stuck to his credo to "praise in public and criticise in private" on the question of police performance, quoting his mother, as he referred to his relationship with the Police Service: "With all your faults, I love you still."