PM meets with US officials after Caroni drug bust

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that she met of­fi­cials of the U.S. Em­bassy yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the more than $171 mil­lion drug bust in the Ca­roni Swamp.

She cred­it­ed the radar sys­tem in­stalled by the Unit­ed States in To­ba­go for help­ing of­fi­cers de­tect and in­ter­cept the ship­ment.

“To­day, I met with some of­fi­cials from the U.S. Em­bassy this evening be­fore I came. That’s not in my script, but I can share it. Us­ing the radar that we in­stalled in To­ba­go, we were able to­day to drug-bust $171 mil­lion worth of il­le­gal drugs in Trinidad and To­ba­go. I share that with you,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter was speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny for Out­stand­ing Per­for­mances in this year’s CXC ex­am­i­na­tions at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza, where she said the radar played a key role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the ma­jor drug bust.

On Wednes­day evening, of­fi­cers at­tached to the Mul­ti-Op­tion Po­lice Sec­tion (MOPS) of the Spe­cial Branch, the Coastal and Air Sup­port Unit (CA­SU), the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU), and oth­er in­ves­tiga­tive, tac­ti­cal, and in­tel­li­gence teams re­cov­ered 1,560 kilo­grammes of “creepy” mar­i­jua­na, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $171,205,320, in the Ca­roni Swamp.

Ten of the 18 ex­cep­tion­al stu­dents recog­nised by CXC this year are from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As she con­grat­u­lat­ed them, Per­sad-Bisses­sar used the mo­ment to re­mind stu­dents that drug run­ning, gun run­ning, and nar­cotics are not a way out of pover­ty.

“The key, the pass­word, is ed­u­ca­tion… So all of you, please, that is the on­ly pass­word,” she said.

The radar sys­tem in To­ba­go, in­stalled on No­vem­ber 28, is part of what she de­scribed as a broad­er ef­fort to im­prove sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the re­gion.