Kamla to roll out crime fighting plan

Addressing the UNC’s Monday Night Forum at the Tulsa Trace Hindu School in San Francique, Persad- Bissessar told party supporters no one was safe in the country and cited a video which was circulating on social media about a young woman who managed to escape an attempted abduction.

“There is nobody in this land who would say otherwise that not one person is safe in Trinidad and Tobago,” she said, adding, “You know the last time I spoke I got a text message and I mentioned a kidnapping? Well I got criticisms from some quarters that I should not have said that but the fact is no one is safe in Trinidad and Tobago, no one.

“But you see the Rowley government, they want to downplay the crime problem. Where are the policies and programmes to deal with before the crime happens? None. They are not even bringing any suggestions. Even the anti-gang legislation only kicks in after the crime has been committed.” She told the enthusiastic crowd her party would not be relegated to a “state of irrelevance” during her watch as political leader.

“The party that I intend to lead into the next government will be characterised by performance, it will be characterised by a citizen conscious culture, those who will be a part of our new government will have to demonstrate a willingness for intelligent hard work, for service, for building a governance that will be participatory governance.

“You the people will have a more direct say in the choice of candidates for local government elections and general elections.” She continued: “We have a plan for economic recovery, we have a plan to fight crime, we have a plan for infrastructure development and we will be rolling those plans out to you in the coming weeks and months.” She said government had already accumulated a debt of $57 billion dollars and was about to take a US $300 million loan from the Andean Development Bank.

“They want to borrow and borrow where they will take what is known as the debt to GDP ratio to about 70 percent and they will have nothing to show for it,” she said “But the one thing you can see is the Tarouba stadium - a $1.3 billion dollar cowshed of shame.

The Tarouba stadium which took so many years and so many dollars later, not the children’s hospital, not the Debe campus, nothing to benefit the people of Trinidad and Tobago.” She also called on government to “come clean on their plan to wind up CL Financial, and I am asking tonight if this is designed to fire sale the assets to the one percent financiers.” Persad-Bissessar also said the TT dollar had “quietly” depreciated in value with the exchange rate being just over seven to one on the Amazon website.

“I heard the prime minister said some time ago in Parliament, he was multiplying by seven, so he admitted the exchange rate is no longer six something, it is now seven. If you go up on Amazon.

com they have the exchange rate as seven point something, so the TT dollar has devalued and depreciated quietly and nobody is saying anything about it.”