PM: My Government will not be distracted or deterred

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Con­struc­tion is un­der­way on a con­crete foun­da­tion for a po­lice post at the Tarou­ba In­ter­change a day af­ter the foun­da­tion for two were laid along the east-west cor­ri­dor. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed that noth­ing will stop her Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish a net­work of po­lice posts in com­mu­ni­ties.

In a post on her X plat­form, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the ini­tia­tive and ques­tioned why any­one would op­pose po­lice posts in­tend­ed to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

“Why would any­one try to stop a po­lice post meant to make our com­mu­ni­ties safer?” she said.

“My Gov­ern­ment will not be dis­tract­ed or de­terred. The safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the peo­ple will al­ways come first.”

The Tarou­ba site is among about 30 lo­ca­tions iden­ti­fied na­tion­wide for po­lice posts, with sev­er­al strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned at ma­jor junc­tions and in­ter­changes in south Trinidad.

At the Gol­con­da In­ter­change, crews were yes­ter­day cut­ting grass at the lo­ca­tion ear­marked for a po­lice post. At Williamsville Junc­tion, how­ev­er, there was no con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty at the emp­ty lot iden­ti­fied for the fa­cil­i­ty.

Chair­man of the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gowrie Roop­nar­ine con­firmed that the Williamsville site had been ear­marked for the pro­posed po­lice post.

Oth­er pro­posed lo­ca­tions in the south in­clude the Tarou­ba Fly­over; Guayagua­yare, next to In­di­an Bay; the junc­tion of Rochard Road and Pe­nal Rock Road; and the junc­tion of Rochard Dou­glas Road and Cu­mu­to Road, near the crick­et ground.

Po­lice posts are al­so planned at the in­ter­sec­tion of the South­ern Main Road, La Ro­main, and the South Trunk Road/High­way, ad­ja­cent to Paria Suites; Ica­cos Junc­tion; Mal­gretoute Junc­tion in Princes Town, op­po­site the WASA boost­er sta­tion; Gol­con­da In­ter­change; and Tor­rib Road, Tabaquite.

The pro­posed posts are part of the Gov­ern­ment’s wider push to in­crease po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas where of­fi­cers can re­spond quick­ly to in­ci­dents and mon­i­tor key trans­porta­tion routes.