KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is push­ing back against con­cerns over the per­mit sys­tem un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act, say­ing there is no rea­son for the pub­lic to be alarmed.

Alexan­der said there was no is­sue with the sys­tem at present, in­sist­ing that cer­tain re­quire­ments must be met be­fore au­thor­i­ties can con­sid­er de­clar­ing an area a Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Area.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said, “The peo­ple need to stop do­ing that. Let me tell you what's hap­pen­ing right now, they're talk­ing about per­mits and per­mits and that's not the case present­ly. There are cer­tain things that must hap­pen be­fore we can even con­sid­er an area of spe­cial op­er­a­tion and it is spelled out in the Act. So, I don't know why peo­ple mak­ing all the ex­cite­ment about that. There is no is­sue re­al­ly. And that's be­ing hon­est.”

Alexan­der said au­thor­i­ties would ad­dress any is­sues that arise, but said that the sit­u­a­tion was cur­rent­ly go­ing well.

He added, “If some­thing was to hap­pen, then we will have to treat with it. But things go­ing pret­ty good. I want to com­mend the men from Laven­tille, La Hor­quet­ta, and dif­fer­ent places who have been call­ing on us and en­sur­ing that the peace is main­tained.”

Mean­while, Alexan­der said man­pow­er and oth­er re­sources re­main top pri­or­i­ties for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) as ef­forts con­tin­ue to ad­dress long wait­ing times on the E-999 emer­gency line.

He ex­pressed hope that im­prove­ments would be seen in the com­ing weeks.