TRINIDAD Y TOBAGO: patrolboats hit drug dealers

Drug dealers are finding it difficult to source their supply of marijuana because of the intensified border patrols instituted by T&T, says Prime Minister Patrick Manning. “I spoke to a man on Sunday morning and he told me marijuana hard to come by and they ascribed that to those boats,” Manning told a cottage meeting in Princes Town on Monday, in reference to Saturday’s launch of six-fast patrol vessels. He lauded the results of this country’s crime-fighting arsenal, but said the rest of the region remained vulnerable to drug traffickers.

To this end, Manning pledged to make Trinidad and Tobago the guardian of the Caribbean to protect the region’s borders from drug traders. After a walkabout in the Princes Town North constituency, Manning told the cottage meeting at St Michael’s Anglican Primary School: “T&T must be our brother’s keeper.” Manning said the Government would be installing radar sites, similar to those established here, in Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Lucia. “I expect that as we build ‘Fortress Trinidad and Tobago,’ they (drug dealers) are going to move on… and what my fear has been for a long time is that they will move from T&T to countries in the region that are much more vulnerable than T&T,” he said