RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) has re­spond­ed to the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SOE) by three months, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing safe­ty while ad­dress­ing crime holis­ti­cal­ly.

In a state­ment is­sued on Jan­u­ary 15, the TT Cham­ber ac­knowl­edged the SOE’s role in tack­ling crime but em­pha­sized the need for a broad­er, more com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach. While the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has seen some pos­i­tive im­pacts from the SOE, con­cerns re­main about the over­all ef­fec­tive­ness of mea­sures such as po­lice raids and the seizure of firearms, par­tic­u­lar­ly se­mi-au­to­mat­ic weapons—ini­tial­ly cit­ed as key ob­jec­tives of the SOE.

“Crime does not have a sin­gle root cause,” the TT Cham­ber not­ed, call­ing for short-, medi­um-, and long-term strate­gies that ad­dress so­cial is­sues and im­prove the op­er­a­tional en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness­es. The or­ga­ni­za­tion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to work­ing with the gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers to de­vel­op so­lu­tions that cre­ate a safer en­vi­ron­ment for all.

The TT Cham­ber al­so ad­dressed the SOE’s im­pact on in­vestor con­fi­dence, not­ing that while sea­soned in­vestors re­main cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, new­er in­vestors have ex­pressed con­cerns.

“Some po­ten­tial in­vestors, par­tic­u­lar­ly those un­fa­mil­iar with the lo­cal mar­ket, are ap­pre­hen­sive about the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion,” the state­ment read. How­ev­er, the Cham­ber as­sured that the SOE is part of a broad­er crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, and ef­forts are on­go­ing to re­store nor­mal­cy.

De­spite these chal­lenges, the TT Cham­ber high­light­ed that many glob­al mar­kets face sim­i­lar is­sues and re­as­sured in­vestors that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains an at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion for busi­ness.

With the Car­ni­val sea­son ap­proach­ing and in­creased cruise ship ar­rivals ex­pect­ed, the TT Cham­ber un­der­scored the crit­i­cal role of tourism in the na­tion’s econ­o­my. The or­ga­ni­za­tion urged state agen­cies to col­lab­o­rate and im­ple­ment ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.