The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is call­ing for ur­gent clar­i­ty on the stalled Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion, warn­ing that de­spite im­proved crime da­ta, se­ri­ous vi­o­lence con­tin­ues to rat­tle the cap­i­tal.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the As­so­ci­a­tion said busi­ness­es in the down­town City Cen­tre are still deal­ing with smashed shopfronts and night-time bur­glar­ies. More trou­bling, it not­ed, is the “shat­ter­ing sound of au­to­mat­ic gun­fire,” par­tic­u­lar­ly along the east-west cor­ri­dor.

The group point­ed to what it de­scribed as a dai­ly pat­tern of killings, par­ents mur­dered in front of chil­dren, young men shot two or three at a time, bod­ies left on main roads in Port-of-Spain and oth­er towns. Gun­shots, it ar­gued, have be­come part of the na­tion­al sound­scape.

But it stressed that struc­tur­al re­form will take time. In the short term, it said, im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to save lives.

DO­MA, which is head­ed by tex­tile mer­chant Gre­go­ry Aboud, de­scribed the pro­posed ZOSO frame­work as a pos­si­ble stop­gap mea­sure. It ex­pressed con­cern that the re­jec­tion of the bill by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors has not been clear­ly ex­plained to the pub­lic. It al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­par­ent re­luc­tance to amend the leg­is­la­tion in line with pro­pos­als from the in­de­pen­dent bench.
The group called for open di­a­logue, urg­ing in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to out­line their analy­sis, con­cerns, and rec­om­men­da­tions in plain lan­guage. It al­so asked the Gov­ern­ment to state what com­pro­mis­es, if any, it is pre­pared to make.
From the streets of the cap­i­tal, the as­so­ci­a­tion said, there is fear and frus­tra­tion on all sides but al­so agree­ment that in­ter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary. It ap­pealed to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to ex­plain their po­si­tions and demon­strate uni­ty on the is­sue of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and sav­ing lives.