KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has not con­firmed whether the Gov­ern­ment is on track to meet its month-end dead­line for the con­struc­tion of ten ad­di­tion­al po­lice posts.

In­stead, Alexan­der in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment was still re­view­ing strate­gic lo­ca­tions to en­sure the posts pro­vide the great­est ben­e­fit to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Last month, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia that ten more posts would be con­struct­ed by the end of Oc­to­ber as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s wider ini­tia­tive to es­tab­lish 30 posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go by the end of this year.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia sought an up­date out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der spoke about iden­ti­fy­ing suit­able lo­ca­tions but gave no de­tails on con­struc­tion progress.

He said, “We are all about per­for­mance, so we are try­ing to put to­geth­er; we are look­ing at strate­gic ar­eas. As I said be­fore, ar­eas were iden­ti­fied, but we’re look­ing to put them where it could of­fer the most amount of ad­van­tage to both law en­force­ment and mem­bers of the pub­lic. So we’re meet­ing in the mid­dle.”

The po­lice posts form part of the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to strength­en the se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence in com­mu­ni­ties through col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF).

Since the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced plans to es­tab­lish 30 such posts, fa­cil­i­ties have been con­struct­ed at Grand Bazaar, Ed­die Hart and Tarou­ba in Trinidad.

More re­cent­ly, three ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty posts were com­mis­sioned in To­ba­go at Sig­nal Hill, Good­wood and Ply­mouth, bring­ing the num­ber of iden­ti­fied lo­ca­tions with con­struct­ed or com­mis­sioned posts to six.

Ac­cord­ing to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, the three mi­cro-polic­ing units in Trinidad have con­duct­ed 978 mo­bile pa­trols, 224 foot pa­trols and 70 op­er­a­tions and ex­er­cis­es since open­ing on Sep­tem­ber 17.

He said those ac­tiv­i­ties re­sult­ed in 29 ar­rests and the is­su­ing of 151 fixed penal­ty no­tices.

The PM said the units are in­tend­ed to com­ple­ment the work of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der has as­sured the pub­lic that there has been no need to ac­ti­vate spe­cial op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing the clo­sure or cor­don­ing off of ar­eas to date.