SoE necessary but not sufficient, business leaders say

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­ph**@*********co.tt

Heavy hand­ed but nec­es­sary giv­en the state of crime in T&T.

This was a com­mon as­sess­ment from var­i­ous busi­ness groups when asked for their per­spec­tive on the lat­est de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency in the coun­try.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, in a re­leased is­sued yes­ter­day, called the State of Emer­gency (SoE) “a nec­es­sary mea­sure in restor­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es. “

The Cham­ber said, “As of ear­ly March 2026, of­fi­cial re­port­ing not­ed that the coun­try had al­ready record­ed 63 homi­cides this year, near­ly match­ing the tal­ly from the same pe­ri­od in the pre­vi­ous year. Au­thor­i­ties cit­ed cred­i­ble ev­i­dence link­ing or­gan­ised gangs—in­clud­ing in­di­vid­u­als re­leased from de­ten­tion af­ter the last state of emer­gency—to the resur­gence in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal acts.

“The re­lease con­tin­ued, “The in­crease in or­gan­ised vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties iden­ti­fied by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), pos­es a grave threat to pub­lic safe­ty. The T&T Cham­ber, there­fore, un­der­stands the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a state of emer­gency (SoE) as an ur­gent and nec­es­sary mea­sure to pro­tect cit­i­zens and pre­serve na­tion­al or­der.

How­ev­er, the T&T Cham­ber was al­so among the many busi­ness groups that stressed that the SoE can not be “a stand­alone so­lu­tion to the crime prob­lem.”

Bal­dath Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Busi­ness Cham­ber, said the SoE was a grim ne­ces­si­ty, but won­dered if it was the on­ly op­tion, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the fail­ure to in­tro­duce the zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tions bill.

“The state of emer­gency is pos­si­bly a high-hand­ed tool, but it has be­come nec­es­sary and it is the on­ly op­tion be­cause of a lack of leg­isla­tive agree­ment with the re­cent bill that went to Par­lia­ment. We sup­port im­me­di­ate safe­ty but we urge our lead­ers to move be­yond the cy­cles of emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions,” said Ma­haraj.

The TTCIC al­so ques­tioned if oth­er strate­gies could have been adopt­ed af­ter the fail­ure to bring ZOSOs to the coun­try.

The T&T Cham­ber said, “The Cham­ber calls on Gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor to act in uni­ty, in ad­dress­ing the is­sue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

“We note as well the re­cent de­feat of the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate and urge the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the con­cerns that were raised re­lat­ing to the leg­is­la­tion, as well as, en­gage in a more col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach in its leg­isla­tive agen­da, and the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion in­tend­ed to be for the good of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) said it ful­ly sup­port­ed the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­in­state the SoE, and was hope­ful it would pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the econ­o­my by ad­dress­ing the es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion.

How­ev­er the TTMA is call­ing for com­ple­men­tary long-term mea­sures and in­ter­ven­tions, which in­clud­ed ad­dress­ing ju­di­cial short­com­ings to fast-track crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings..

The TTMA, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged the SoE may im­pact tourism in­flows but viewed it as the bet­ter of two evils, “of­fer­ing greater po­ten­tial to re­store safe­ty and at­tract fu­ture tourist ar­rivals.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said the Prime Min­is­ter had warned the SoE could re­turn if crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty had a resur­gence fol­low­ing its end a month ago. He was dis­ap­point­ed that she was prompt­ed to make that de­ci­sion by the coun­try’s crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“They’re small in num­ber, and it is un­for­tu­nate that they hold the en­tire coun­try to ran­som. And we ex­pect to see pos­i­tive suc­cess com­ing out of the state of emer­gency that was en­act­ed to­day,” said Singh who was hope­ful the SoE would not dis­rupt eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said, “We did not see any ma­te­r­i­al fall­out in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the last state of emer­gency, and we see no rea­son for that to hap­pen dur­ing the course of this lat­est in­car­na­tion of the state of emer­gency, and we re­main hope­ful that we will see pos­i­tive ben­e­fit re­dound­ing to the so­ci­ety when this state of emer­gency comes to an end.”

Ra­mon Gre­go­rio of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said his busi­ness group saw the need for the SoE, giv­en the surge in crime, but was al­so hop­ing for greater com­mu­ni­ca­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of crime pre­ven­tion strate­gies.

“We recog­nise the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act de­ci­sive­ly in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty amid on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, and we un­der­stand the need for mea­sures aimed at restor­ing or­der and pro­tect­ing com­mu­ni­ties. At the same time, the Cham­ber un­der­scores the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing that emer­gency pow­ers are ex­er­cised in a trans­par­ent, pro­por­tion­ate, and time-bound man­ner, with clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, in­vestor con­fi­dence, and the pro­tec­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties re­main crit­i­cal to na­tion­al re­silience,” Gre­go­rio said.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Visham Bab­wah said while the crime sit­u­a­tion was a con­cern for the busi­ness sec­tor, he was not con­vinced an­oth­er SoE would prove to be the key to curb­ing crime in the long run.

He said, ‘We tried it two times, two or three times, and it is not work­ing, right? Be­cause if you go back to when the state of emer­gency ends, crime spi­rals again, right? It means that you can­not be do­ing the same thing, you know, the same way, and ex­pect the same re­sults. You have to do some­thing dif­fer­ent.”