Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

While the busi­ness sec­tor is wel­com­ing Cari­com’s re­newed thrust to com­bat gun and gang vi­o­lence in the re­gion, tourism stake­hold­ers be­lieve T&T must start a ro­bust pub­lic re­la­tions (PR) cam­paign to en­sure its glob­al im­age is not tar­nished in the process.

Last Fri­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, speak­ing as Cari­com’s lead on se­cu­ri­ty is­sues at the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Heads, an­nounced that gun vi­o­lence in pub­lic spaces, which is per­pe­trat­ed main­ly by crim­i­nal gangs, will soon be deemed an act of ter­ror. He said this will re­quire new leg­is­la­tion that should be ready in the com­ing months.

Com­ment­ing on this, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj said she be­lieves in­vestors would per­ceive this as a pos­i­tive move, even with the word “ter­ror” in­volved, in a coun­try al­ready grap­pling with a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

“I don't think that this would be seen neg­a­tive­ly at all. I ac­tu­al­ly think it shows that our gov­ern­ments are work­ing to­geth­er to do some­thing to help pro­tect our peo­ple, and to pro­tect any­body com­ing in here,” Ma­haraj said.

“I ac­tu­al­ly think in­vestors may look at it pos­i­tive­ly be­cause it shows there's ac­tu­al ini­tia­tive is be­ing tak­en in the re­gion.”

Ma­haraj said the TTCIC has al­ways main­tained more de­ci­sive ac­tion was need­ed to com­bat crime.

Asked how in­vestor con­fi­dence is present­ly, Ma­haraj ex­plained, “It varies, there is no da­ta or re­search but I can tell you that we've had in­vestors who come in and want to see it a lit­tle more sta­ble here. It's a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go's land space is a lot less than Ja­maica, so a lot of in­vestors are go­ing to Ja­maica for many rea­sons but re­mem­ber they have spe­cial zones of op­er­a­tion with their state of emer­gency.”

Ma­haraj said for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments in this coun­try have not stopped but there has been a de­crease.

“Be­cause peo­ple want to be more com­fort­able by and large with the state of af­fairs. If you had to in­vest your mon­ey some­where, wouldn't you like to in­vest it where you feel safe and you know your em­ploy­ees would feel safe?”

Mean­while, Am­cham T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie said they would have to see the leg­is­la­tion be­fore com­ment­ing. He said it would be pre­ma­ture to as­sume in­vestors would be turned off from do­ing busi­ness if the state seeks to com­bat “ter­ror­ism”.

“I would not jump to that con­clu­sion, you are see­ing car­tels be­ing des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, so you have the recog­ni­tion that or­gan­ised crime is in­sid­i­ous, it has its ten­ta­cles in all spheres of the so­ci­ety and fu­els cor­rup­tion and white-col­lar crime to en­able the crime that strikes fear in peo­ple's hearts, which is the gun crime, so we have to ad­dress or­gan­ised crime dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Tewarie said what is cer­tain is that the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion is a busi­ness de­ter­rent.

“The sta­tis­tics re­gard­ing homi­cides and vi­o­lent crime in the re­gion are alarm­ing and clear­ly, we need to re­duce vi­o­lent crime, which is en­abled by or­gan­ised crime, if we are to max­imise our eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and there­fore, we need to ap­proach the prob­lem dif­fer­ent­ly. Whether this is a so­lu­tion or not, we will have to see be­cause we don't have the specifics,” he posit­ed.

But Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) co­or­di­na­tor Jai Lelad­hars­ingh wor­ries about a po­ten­tial “dou­ble-edged sword” in the ap­proach.

“We, the cit­i­zens, would wel­come mea­sures to put in place to mit­i­gate crime. But when peo­ple see Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der a State of Emer­gency, in­vest­ment has been ham­pered and when they see acts of ter­ror it is al­so a hin­drance, so damned if we do, damned if we don't,” Lelad­hars­ingh said.

He be­lieves a pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor PR cam­paign should be ini­ti­at­ed to en­sure this coun­try main­tains a pos­i­tive glob­al im­age.

Tourism con­sul­tant Kevon Wil­son agreed, say­ing this has worked for oth­er crime-rid­dled coun­tries.

“When you think of oth­er coun­tries like Colom­bia and Ja­maica, which have had a his­to­ry of high crime, they have man­aged to turn the nar­ra­tive around be­cause of their tourism mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions. For ex­am­ple, Colom­bia, at one point their ta line was 'the on­ly risk is not want­i­ng to leave.' Then, of course, Ja­maica with their strat­e­gy with the all-in­clu­sives and hav­ing des­ti­na­tions with­in the des­ti­na­tion, whether it be Mon­tego Bay or Ocho Rios. They were able to cir­cum­vent the is­sue be­cause they in­vit­ed peo­ple to come to Ocho Rios or Mon­tego Bay rather than fo­cus­ing on Ja­maica,” he ex­plained.

Wil­son said while the leg­is­la­tion is im­por­tant, the state must recog­nise a sim­ple on­line search of T&T may give re­sults about the cur­rent SoE and now a war on ter­ror.

How­ev­er, he lament­ed that this coun­try’s tourism brand is not seen as a pri­or­i­ty.

“If tourism is seen as a crit­i­cal in­dus­try and there is the po­lit­i­cal will to put tourism at the fore­front, then ab­solute­ly, but as we know, his­tor­i­cal­ly, tourism has nev­er been at the fore­front po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he ar­gued.

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­pha Lorde al­so en­dorsed that po­si­tion.

“I agree with that 100 per cent, and I think the Gov­ern­ment has a strong re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in that. They can­not just leave it to the pri­vate sec­tor or the as­so­ci­a­tions be­cause they (the gov­ern­ment) would be the peo­ple with the loud­est voic­es in the room and the peo­ple all the ma­jor en­ti­ties would lis­ten to. So yes, a stronger PR cam­paign that says whilst we are deal­ing with these things, Trinidad and To­ba­go is open for busi­ness."

Lorde said while the word “ter­ror­ism” is not some­thing the in­dus­try needs at this time, “we would want to see some­thing that has teeth in it to ac­tu­al­ly do what it said it would do. And if we view the leg­is­la­tion just in draft form at least and it speaks in a way that deals with gun vi­o­lence, we would be very much in sup­port of it."

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.