With crime being recorded on daily basis in this country, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal is demanding to know why so few CCTV cameras are working nationwide.
Speaking at the UNC’s weekly Sunday press briefing, Moonilal claimed that across TT, only 46 per cent of police CCTV cameras were working.
Trinidad had 730 working CCTV cameras out of a complement of 1,607 cameras, he said.
Tobago also had fewer than half its CCTV cameras working, just 90 cameras out of 189.
He also complained that after $27 million was spent on mobile scanners which would let police detect guns hidden in passing vehicles, these devices were non-functional.
Moonilal said when National Transformation Alliance political leader Gary Griffith was Commissioner of Police, it started to work.
He added that “Minister Fitzgerald Hinds had those machines for one year and could not fix them. Mr Hinds is the biggest failure in National Security. But as a friend reminded me: You can have state-of-the-art technology, but if you have state-of-the-art idiots, then the technology is worthless.”
Moonilal also hit State project manager Udecott for lacking structure, policies and qualified staff as he claimed an employee is also a contractor who was about to get a contract to build a youth facility in north Trinidad.
He claimed that at the Rural Development Company, tenders were “sharing out like nuts and doubles.”