NAR has anti-kidnapping solution for TT

NO CHILD in Trinidad and Tobago will ever be kidnapped again if Central Government, local government bodies and the police join forces. This was the declaration from NAR leader Lennox Sankersingh at the party’s national council meeting in Port-of-Spain yesterday. The NAR leader said local Government councillors could provide critical information to the police about their respective districts which could help them to track down kidnappers and rescue their victims.  He said if Government, local Government bodies and law enforcement agencies worked in tandem it was possible to eliminate the scourge of kidnapping once and for all.  Sankersingh also said such a system could return the nation’s most recent kidnap victim, Vijay Persad, to his family “in one week.”

However, he lamented that many local Government bodies are excluded from national efforts to deal with crime. The NAR leader said neither the Government nor the Opposition was able to offer any solutions to reducing crime in Trinidad and Tobago and he did not agree with Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday that constitutional reform was TT’s only hope of dealing with crime.  He suggested that repairing existing police stations, improving the Witness Protection Programme and improving “the management of the Police Service (without introducing new legislation)” should form part of Government’s Plan B’ since the Police Reform Bills were defeated in Parliament last week. Sankersingh said TT could become like Guyana where there are reports of Government-sponsored hit squads dealing with criminals.

He reiterated UNC allegations of an alliance between the PNM and certain criminal elements in TT. The NAR leader called on Attorney General John Jeremie to say what was the purpose of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) falling under the jurisdiction of his Ministry. Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Junior National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said it was the UNC which placed the ACB under the Office of the AG and it has remained there ever since. Sankersingh also said Hinds is not addressing his new portfolio seriously and wondered what was happening on the issue of prison reform.