DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The British High Com­mis­sion is stand­ing by the find­ings con­tained in its Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note (CPIN) on Trinidad and To­ba­go, which es­ti­mat­ed that 186 gangs were op­er­at­ing in this coun­try in 2023.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the High Com­mis­sion de­fend­ed the method­ol­o­gy be­hind the re­port, say­ing its CPINs are com­piled us­ing ev­i­dence from a broad range of sources, in­clud­ing rep­utable me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies, hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions and the UK’s For­eign, Com­mon­wealth and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice.

It said the re­ports are sub­ject to con­tin­u­ous re­view and are as­sessed against es­tab­lished stan­dards for coun­try-of-ori­gin in­for­ma­tion.

“Our CPINs are pub­lished on the gov.uk web­site and are kept un­der con­stant re­view and up­dat­ed pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly. When con­sid­er­ing in­clu­sion of in­for­ma­tion, we ad­here to es­tab­lished Coun­try of Ori­gin in­for­ma­tion (COI) prin­ci­ples. We crit­i­cal­ly as­sess sources and the in­for­ma­tion they pro­vide for rel­e­vance, re­li­a­bil­i­ty, ac­cu­ra­cy, bal­ance, cur­ren­cy, trans­paren­cy, and trace­abil­i­ty,” the High Com­mis­sion said.

The re­sponse comes as Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der con­tin­ues to chal­lenge the UK’s fig­ures.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing an event on Sun­day, Alexan­der again said the Gov­ern­ment has dif­fer­ent in­tel­li­gence on the num­ber of gangs op­er­at­ing in T&T. He first dis­put­ed the fig­ure last Fri­day at an­oth­er event, where he said, “They prob­a­bly got their in­tel­li­gence from what­ev­er source, we have our in­tel­li­gence here. Now we live here, so we un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing here.

“What­ev­er in­for­ma­tion they have at this time is not enough time for me to re­al­ly dis­sect it... I read it, but it’s not enough time for me to dis­sect it, for me to do an au­top­sy on it, but the fig­ures are dif­fer­ent to what we have present­ly. They... ap­par­ent­ly they said it was high­er, but we didn’t see that.”

Mean­while, the British High Com­mis­sion did not say whether the as­sess­ment, which was pub­lished on June 5, af­fects the UK’s con­sid­er­a­tion of asy­lum claims by T&T na­tion­als. It al­so did not re­spond to ques­tions on whether it has up­dat­ed its gang fig­ures or the cur­rent lev­el of en­gage­ment be­tween UK au­thor­i­ties and the T&T Gov­ern­ment.