Government will redouble its efforts to protect, secure and ensure an environment “that is not conducive to fear and terror” aimed at those who provide security to the population, Prime Minister Keith Rowley said yesterday.
Rowley extended condolences to the family and friends of prisons officer Fitzalbert Victor Jr, who was gunned down in front of his Laventille home on Monday.
He was the third prisons officer slain in the past year and it has caused outrage among the ranks of the Prisons Service, which has bitterly blamed the state for failing to implement legislation to protect prisons officers.
Rowley’s statement, which responded to complaints from the Prisons Service, came at the same time yesterday that National Security Minister Edmund Dillon met with the executive of the T&T Police Service on various issues, from crime to police management, and gave them the assurance his team would treat urgently with issues raised by them.
Rowley, in his statement on Victor’s death, said: “One cannot overstate the importance of the work done by the men and women of the Prisons Service, Police, Coast Guard, Regiment and other arms of the nation’s security system, who put their lives on the line and stand in defence and promotion of law and order in our communities. If they don’t, the result will undoubtedly be anarchy.”
The PM added: “Government acknowledges that the level of criminal conduct in Trinidad and Tobago is unacceptable. We also acknowledge that incarceration of persons on remand and convicted persons remain an integral part of the national security regimen.
“The level of violent crime and criminal conduct is objectionable and continues to attract the full attention of the Cabinet, National Security Council and all other arms of the State, whose duty it is to work assiduously to ensure that we return, in the shortest possible time, to good order, peace, safety and security in T&T.”