Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar says the plans and promises made in the 2024 budget are irrelevant until crime is adequately dealt with, proclaiming: 'There can be no prosperity without safety and security.'
Persad-Bissessar gave her budget response in Parliament on Friday afternoon.
On Monday, after Finance Minister Colm Imbert read the 2024 budget, she complained that he only spoke about crime very late and not much.
It was this which led to a major chunk of her response focusing on national security and crime, coming on the heels of the police announcing the murder rate surpassed the figure for the same period last year.
A total of $6.912 billion was allocated to national security. In addition, Imbert said $80 million will be allocated for new police vehicles, and the recruit intake next year will be tripled.
Calling the crime situation a 'nightmare,' Persad-Bissessar said, 'Even as I speak today, even as we are here, comfortably ensconced in this chamber talking highfalutin talk about the economy, some innocent citizen will be robbed and murdered.
'There is a war on the outside. Criminals are at war with innocent citizens whom the Government have left to fend for themselves.'
On Thursday, the police said it solves 13 out of every 100 murders.
Referencing this, Persad-Bissessar said the Government has ceded control to criminals.
She also spoke of the murders of children - namely Faith Peterkin, ten, Arianna Peterkin, 14, Shane Peterkin, 17, and Tiffany Peterkin, 19, who were shot dead in their Heights of Guanapo home, and 13-year-old Andrea Lallan, who was murdered at her Rio Claro home. Both incidents happened in September.
'When will our dreaming, beautiful children stop ending up in body bags?' she asked.
'How do you all live with yourselves buying more body bags than book bags for our children?'
She said there are more murders per year in TT than good songs, concerts, and gold medals from sportsmen and sportswomen.
'Murder has become more popular than culture.
'Murder and pain, every day, are the new culture of TT.'
In his speech, Imbert said Government sought to 'contain and combat serious crime' since 2015.
Persad-Bissessar scoffed at this. But she added that despite crime being a 'terrifying monster,' she said, it can be tackled.
She outlined measures she believes Government is well-positioned to act on as well as what the UNC would do if it forms the next government.
She urged Government to rebrand the Highway Patrol Unit, properly staff the E999 call centre, reactivate community comfort patrols, increase the number of CCTV cameras across the country and install electronic billboards.
She also suggested 'properly supporting' the Transnational Organised Crime Unit, increasing covert operations at ports, providing electronic data access in all police vehicles, creating a fully computerised crime statistics and reporting system, and having indoor and outdoor shooting ranges for all protective services.
Other suggestions were a training swimming
