Fix crime to save T&T’s retail trade, south business leaders say

Raphael John-Lall

Fol­low­ing the mur­der of a young child in Erin, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in south Trinidad is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to take stronger ac­tion to halt ris­ing crime or else busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty would con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate.

Last week­end, the coun­try was rocked by the news that 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne, a stan­dard four stu­dent of Erin RC pri­ma­ry school was mur­dered and her body found in Cara­pal Road, Erin.

That area of T&T is home to many im­por­tant busi­ness­es and com­pa­nies.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, one of T&T’s most im­por­tant com­pa­nies is lo­cat­ed in San­ta Flo­ra just a few miles from Erin.

There is al­so the Pa­lo Seco Cred­it Union in ad­di­tion to hard­wares, su­per­mar­kets, bars, a trav­el agency and restau­rants be­tween the bor­ough of Siparia and Erin.

Erin has a beach and is home to a ma­jor fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty in ad­di­tion to a po­lice sta­tion, health cen­tre and schools which are lo­cat­ed in the area.

Erin is al­so home to one of the Caribbean’s most im­por­tant farms and meat pro­cess­ing plants which pro­duces the fa­mous Erin Farm brand of sausages and oth­er types of meat.

In light of the shock­ing mur­der last week­end in Erin, mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in South Trinidad spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian on the spate of vi­o­lent crimes that con­tin­ue to grip the na­tion.

Busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in fear

Pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce, Clint Ar­joon, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, warned that the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in South and across T&T will de­te­ri­o­rate if crime is not curbed.

Ar­joon re­count­ed that he too has been the vic­tim of crime. He was kid­napped many years ago and more re­cent­ly in 2024, he was robbed at gun­point of his valu­ables.

“I think crime is a ma­jor is­sue in our coun­try. It is not a mi­nor is­sue. It has been af­fect­ing all ar­eas of our lives on a dai­ly ba­sis. It has def­i­nite­ly cre­at­ed a de­cline in our busi­ness­es from busi­ness own­ers’ open­ing hours, think­ing about ex­pand­ing, in­vest­ing. A lot of peo­ple that I know, it has been af­fect­ing them in these dif­fer­ent ar­eas. Even go­ing out to get some­thing, if it’s even far or late hours, it’s def­i­nite­ly cre­at­ing a neg­a­tive im­pact in that area,” he said.

A press re­lease from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment is head­ed to Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), which ex­pires on June 17.

Com­ment­ing on that, Ar­joon said in his view the SoE has not been as ef­fec­tive as it could be.

“While I sup­port the SoE, I think that it is not as ef­fec­tive as it should be be­cause you still have a lot more crimes tak­ing place. And even with the po­lice, I think that their fo­cus is more on ve­hic­u­lar fees as to hav­ing road­blocks and im­ple­ment­ing new things to cre­ate an in­come, rather than iden­ti­fy­ing the sources of the prob­lems and the per­pe­tra­tors be­hind these crimes.”

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to do more to as­sist the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“They are not deal­ing with it as how it should be dealt with. The pun­ish­ment is very, very min­i­mal. You are not see­ing that. The Gov­ern­ment talked about stand-your-ground (leg­is­la­tion) and be­ing able to arm cit­i­zens. I think that be­ing able to ob­tain an FUL since the new gov­ern­ment has come in­to pow­er, that has reached a stand­still. And a lot of firearm hold­ers who would have had their firearms tak­en from them, in­clud­ing po­lice of­fi­cers who are vic­tims as well. The sys­tem of be­ing able to get back their firearms af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed with­in a month and years lat­er, they have not re­ceived their firearms back.”

He added that com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try would “di­min­ish” if the crime sit­u­a­tion is al­lowed to go unchecked.

“So, there’s a lot of fix­ing that needs to be done by Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty where crime is con­cerned. And the bot­tom line is that if they do not fix this crime or put a se­ri­ous dent in­to it, the com­merce is di­min­ish­ing and peo­ple are be­ing af­fect­ed all over.”

Poised to ex­plode

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett told the Busi­ness Guardian that the death of this young child is a ma­jor loss for the coun­try.

She al­so agrees that the SoE should be ex­tend­ed.

“The Gov­ern­ment of­fered the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill where po­lice would be post­ed in the de­pressed ar­eas. My feel­ing is that if that mur­der­er knew that po­lice were pa­trolling the area, he would not have com­mit­ted that act. I agree with the ex­ten­sion of the SoE. We need to keep law and or­der in our beau­ti­ful coun­try. I have to con­grat­u­late the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on a good job so far. He seems to be mo­ti­vat­ing his staff to go out there and up­hold the law. Our so­ci­ety has been deemed a law­less so­ci­ety by two Prime Min­is­ters.”

De­spite the de­press­ing con­di­tions the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty faces, she is op­ti­mistic that as the en­er­gy sec­tor im­proves, South Trinidad’s econ­o­my will im­prove.

“Busi­ness is slow be­cause of the lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment. If you don’t earn, you can­not spend. We have seen an uptick in the South East­ern part of the coun­try. That is main­ly due to the pres­ence of Shell which has em­ployed many per­sons from that area. They now have spend­ing pow­er so they are buy­ing more items. Give us a few more months be­fore we ex­plode with all the good things hap­pen­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Pres­i­dent of The Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh ex­tend­ed his deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and loved ones of the young child whose life was trag­i­cal­ly lost.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian that in­ci­dents such as these are heart­break­ing and serve as a painful re­minder of the im­pact that crime and vi­o­lence con­tin­ue to have on the na­tion’s com­mu­ni­ties.

“From the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty’s per­spec­tive, crime re­mains one of the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges af­fect­ing dai­ly life and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in South Trinidad. While many busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to op­er­ate and in­vest de­spite these chal­lenges, there is no doubt that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in­flu­ences con­sumer be­hav­iour, re­duces pub­lic con­fi­dence, in­creas­es se­cu­ri­ty costs, and, in some cas­es, dis­cour­ages peo­ple from mov­ing freely with­in their com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing evening hours.”

He said the Cham­ber has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that pub­lic safe­ty is fun­da­men­tal to eco­nom­ic growth and when cit­i­zens feel un­safe, busi­ness­es suf­fer through re­duced cus­tomer traf­fic, low­er in­vest­ment con­fi­dence, and in­creased op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“Re­gard­ing the pos­si­ble ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency be­yond June 17, the Cham­ber be­lieves the de­ci­sion should ul­ti­mate­ly be guid­ed by ob­jec­tive as­sess­ments from the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and mea­sur­able out­comes achieved dur­ing the cur­rent pe­ri­od. If the ex­ten­sion can pro­vide law en­force­ment with the nec­es­sary tools to con­tin­ue dis­rupt­ing crim­i­nal net­works, re­cov­er­ing il­le­gal firearms, and im­prov­ing pub­lic safe­ty, then it war­rants se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion.”

How­ev­er, he added that any ex­ten­sion should be ac­com­pa­nied by clear per­for­mance bench­marks, in­creased po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty cou­pled with the strength of the De­fense Force, in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, and sus­tained ef­forts to strength­en com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would al­so like to see greater trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the re­sults achieved un­der the SoE so that the pub­lic can have con­fi­dence that the mea­sures are de­liv­er­ing mean­ing­ful im­prove­ments in safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that his po­si­tion re­mains that se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures must be bal­anced with the need to pro­tect eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, civ­il lib­er­ties, and pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“The ul­ti­mate goal must be a safer T&T where cit­i­zens can live, work, shop, and con­duct busi­ness with­out fear.”