Out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says fol­low­ing reg­u­lar as­sess­ments re­gard­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), he is not an­tic­i­pat­ing a fur­ther ex­ten­sion.

“I don’t ex­pect that we would be re­ly­ing much more on that ap­proach be­cause the po­lice would have been seen to be do­ing cer­tain things and now we can con­tin­ue along cer­tain lines with­out an emer­gency,” Row­ley said dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day.

He said Gov­ern­ment had utilised the spe­cial pow­ers un­der the SoE, which be­gan on De­cem­ber 30 and was ex­tend­ed to a three-month pe­ri­od af­ter Par­lia­ment ap­proval, to take de­ci­sive ac­tion against crime and it had been strate­gic. He added that he ex­pects the po­lice to en­deav­our now to put an end to crim­i­nal gang ac­tiv­i­ties.

The PM said while crime re­mains a se­ri­ous chal­lenge, Gov­ern­ment has worked con­sis­tent­ly to con­front it head-on, de­spite the coun­try record­ing in­creas­es in the homi­cide rate large­ly at­trib­uted to gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal firearms.

Ad­dress­ing whether his Gov­ern­ment had failed to peg back the crim­i­nals.

Row­ley said, “I wouldn’t use the word fail, I would say we have been chal­lenged be­fore I came to this of­fice, we have been chal­lenged through­out the pe­ri­od and as I leave the chal­lenge con­tin­ues but it is not a ques­tion of the ab­sence of ef­forts.”

Dr Row­ley’s com­ment comes in the midst of a State of Emer­gency and af­ter the in­jec­tion of tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in­to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, but he in­sist­ed that through­out his lead­er­ship, at no time was a blind eye turned to what he has since la­belled a pub­lic health is­sue.

“The longer we take to ac­cept crime is a pub­lic health is­sue, the longer we will take to ame­lio­rate it and I wouldn’t even say elim­i­nate be­cause what we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is a so­ci­etal be­hav­iour­al prob­lem and it does not re­spect po­lit­i­cal cy­cles. We have had a num­ber of ini­tia­tives which were called for, some have been suc­cess­ful, some have not been.”

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, there ex­ists se­ri­ous com­part­men­tal­i­sa­tion in au­thor­i­ty, which posed chal­lenges to pol­i­cy and ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sions.

“I am dis­ap­point­ed that we have not been able to do more with re­spect to this so­ci­etal be­hav­iour­al as­pect of crim­i­nal con­duct and it is some­thing that is not a fea­ture of this per­son, that per­son, this race, that race, this ge­og­ra­phy, that ge­og­ra­phy.”

Not­ing sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to strength­en the po­lice ser­vice, equip­ment and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, as well as the pas­sage of an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion, how­ev­er, Row­ley pushed back against the ar­gu­ment that an­oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tion could have man­aged the crime sit­u­a­tion bet­ter.

“Don’t com­pare us with an­oth­er gov­ern­ment be­cause that gov­ern­ment might have been in of­fice and it could have been far worse.”

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has con­tin­ued to slam Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to ar­rest the coun­try’s crime scourge. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so tak­en par­tic­u­lar aim at Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, re­peat­ed­ly call­ing for his dis­missal.

Asked why he had kept faith in Hinds, Row­ley said the blame could not sole­ly be pinned on Hinds.

“I do not and did not be­lieve that get­ting the bet­ter of crim­i­nals is on­ly about the min­is­ter. Yes, I have con­fi­dence in him be­cause there is a re­quire­ment as a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter to treat with con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, to treat with pur­pose, re­spect and con­cern and all of those be­hind closed doors.”