Shameless abdication of ministerial responsibility
Minister Hinds on today’s Morning Edition with Fazeer Mohammed, declared that his “duty is not to ensure that people feel safe and secure” but merely to provide encouragement, general support, guidance and resources to our security agencies.
Heaven help us.
We are now witnessing a level of incompetence and benighted idiocy never before seen in a TT National Security Minister.
Hinds is clearly oblivious to the fact that our National Security arms report to him. If they are not achieving their fundamental mandate of providing security for our citizenry under his tenure, then it is his duty as the responsible Minister to resign forthwith.
The most obvious measure of his Ministry’s performance is whether citizens feel safe and secure. Everything else is secondary to that overriding goal.
At the moment no one feels safe. Therefore Hinds has failed miserably.
With 62 murders already for 2022, we are, under Hinds’ leadership, well on track for over 600 murders this year.
Between Hinds’ escalating murder rates and Deyalsingh’s Covid deaths, funeral homes are a thriving business.
A National Security Minister must provide visionary leadership, including necessary resources to security arms, that will inspire personnel under him to perform optimally by among other things increasing crime detection rates, lessening murders and reducing prison recidivism rates thereby providing a much safer environment.
Ministers who do not understand that the buck stops with them are abdicators. They are incapable of providing the leadership required in these perilous times where everyone is at risk including children and young women at home, at work, using public transport or going about their daily lives.
Minister Hinds must be reminded that his Ministry’s current Vision and Mission statements are:
“To be at the pinnacle of public safety and security delivery” and
“To advance national development by creating a safer and more secure society through enhanced collaboration among all stakeholders, intelligence-based decision-making and strengthened inter-agency structures and systems.”
If Hinds cannot deliver on his Ministry’s Vision and Mission in quantifiable ways like reducing this year’s murder rate by ten percent compared to last year’s or eliminating gun prevalence measurably; then Hinds must admit his ineffectiveness, resign and save TT from his incompetence, cluelessness, lack of vision and monumental ineptitude.
Rodney Charles
Member of Parliament for Naparima