PM: US radar “served us well”

Jesse Ramdeo

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Unit­ed States-op­er­at­ed radar once based in To­ba­go “it did serve us well,” as she ad­dressed con­cerns over its re­moval.

She spoke on Sat­ur­day af­ter Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the Marakaz-Al-AS­JA Ja­maat in Char­lieville, where she al­so de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s crime mea­sures, in­clud­ing the lat­est State of Emer­gency.

“We were lucky to have it the time we had it. They need it for their own use, as you know. They’re on an­oth­er front, and they prob­a­bly need it for that pur­pose. But it did serve us well, and we thank them very much for it,” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has raised con­cerns over trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the radar’s in­stal­la­tion and re­moval from the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port site in To­ba­go.

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu said the coun­try re­mains un­clear on whether the sys­tem ben­e­fit­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said crime strate­gies are pro­duc­ing re­sults, point­ing to a drop in killings.

“We con­tin­ue in the fight against crime. We have sev­er­al ini­tia­tives. Some have al­ready borne fruit. We have seen crime at the low­est it has been in many, many years. The mur­ders have been down by 42%. Let’s not for­get that.”

She de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to im­pose an­oth­er SOE.

“Peo­ple are say­ing, why an­oth­er SOE? Be­cause on­ly 42% down. We need to bring it down by the largest num­ber, so 100 mi­nus 42 is what? 58% more that we have to work to bring down. We con­tin­ue to work on that. Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty re­mains very high on our pri­or­i­ty.”