PM Kamla Persad defends US Radar at Tobago Airport amid $171M drug seizure claims

Trinidad and Tobago: Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar continues to defend the installation of a US military radar at ANR International Robinson Airport in Tobago. She claimed that “it helped police to seize $171 million marijuana in an unmanned boat in the Caroni Swamp.”

She said this statement when she was addressing a Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) awards ceremony at Government Campus Plaza, Port of Spain on December 11.

The Prime Minister Kamla Persad further said that “A special thanks to Commissioner of Police Allister Guevarro, who introduced this radar to me and who busted the illegal drug cartels of $171 million worth in the nation with the help of this.”

She also disclosed that on December 11, she met with some of the officials from the US Embassy, but she did not disclose what they had discussed.

In her address to this she again shared her vision from 2010 to 2015 that she wanted children of the nation to be highly educated rather than watch them engage in illegal activities or consume drugs or narcotics.

Kamla further emphasised that the “US Embassy will help us to improve our surveillance and intelligence we gather on the narco traffickers in our waters and outside our waters.”

On December 12, Kamla Persad who is also a National Security Chair posted on her Facebook page while extending her thank you note to the new radar system as she wrote “Thanks to our new radar system, law enforcement intercepted $171 million in illegal narcotics-a significant blow to criminal networks.”

Along with this she also disclosed what she had talked with the US Embassy as she stated “on December 11, I also met with officials from the US Embassy, where we discussed our continued co-operation in the fight against crime.”

While praising the radar system, she said “the radar has subsequently been identified as a AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) system with capabilities that go beyond the objectives which Persad-Bissessar said it could be used for.”

In the end she publicly supported  the administration of Trump who launched its anti-narcotics exercise to combat all the illegal activities in the waters.

This move of hers was praised by many of the people however some have also criticized the move, calling it unnecessary and not so important.