Couva chamber condemns shooting; calls for stronger security from TTPS

Shas­tri Boodan

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce has con­demned the mur­der of a busi­ness­woman and a cus­tomer in the Cou­va area, warn­ing that crime and vi­o­lence pose a se­ri­ous threat to the safe­ty of cit­i­zens and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said the in­ci­dent was an­oth­er re­minder of grow­ing con­cerns over crime and vi­o­lence and the risks they pose to pub­lic safe­ty and busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

“Crime can­not be al­lowed to un­der­mine the con­fi­dence of our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty or threat­en the liveli­hoods of those who con­tribute to the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try. Busi­ness own­ers and their em­ploy­ees must be able to con­duct their dai­ly op­er­a­tions with­out fear of vi­o­lence, in­tim­i­da­tion, or be­com­ing vic­tims of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” it said.

The cham­ber called on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to in­crease pa­trols, im­prove po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and strength­en se­cu­ri­ty across Cou­va, Point Lisas and sur­round­ing com­mer­cial dis­tricts.

It al­so called for a more co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach in­volv­ing the po­lice, the Gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to ad­dress the root caus­es of crime, strength­en se­cu­ri­ty and en­sure that those re­spon­si­ble for crim­i­nal acts are brought to jus­tice.

The cham­ber said it re­mained hope­ful that the Gov­ern­ment would ho­n­our its com­mit­ment to pro­vide Firearm User Li­cences (FULs) for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“At a time when busi­ness­es are be­ing chal­lenged by ris­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, the promised FULs is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in help­ing busi­ness­es re­main vi­able and pro­tect them­selves.”

The cham­ber said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty could not be ex­pect­ed to shoul­der the bur­den of in­creas­ing crime while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly nav­i­gat­ing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges af­fect­ing dai­ly op­er­a­tions. It stressed that mean­ing­ful sup­port, time­ly in­ter­ven­tion and ef­fec­tive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were nec­es­sary to en­sure busi­ness­es could con­tin­ue to op­er­ate and con­tribute to the econ­o­my.