By INDARJIT SEURAJ Thursday, August 20 2009

SERIOUS questions were raised yesterday by a Port-of-Spain magistrate as to how a Chinese national who can neither read nor write English, was granted a firearm user’s licence 11 years ago.

“If a person is issued a firearm licence with conditions which must be adhered to, and these conditions are written in English, how could someone who can’t read and write English be given a firearm?” Magistrate Avason Quinlan asked.

She sought answers after Jun Lean Chen pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of three rounds of nine millimetre ammunition. Chen, a businesswoman of Hillsborough in Maraval, was issued a firearm user’s licence in 1998 and continuously renewed up to 2006, despite her inability to speak English.

On October 21, 2008 Chen returned from Canada after leaving Trinidad for two years. She took her nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistol and 28 rounds of ammunition to the Maraval Police Station to have the relevant licence renewed.

There, it was discovered by Sgt Gorkings Samuel that the licences allowed her to only have up to 25 rounds in her possession at any given time, according to a booklet which accompanied the pistol and ammunition.

She was told that she unlawfully had three rounds and when the investigator asked her to give a statement, Chen informed him that she could neither read nor write in English. After Magistrate Quinlan asked her questions, for which she got no answers, the case was adjourned to today when Chen will face her punishment.

Asked for a comment, acting Police Commissioner James Philbert described the granting of the licence to Chen, given her circumstances, as “strange.”

“Well, I too would like to know how she got that (firearm user’s licence),” Philbert said, when told of the case. Philbert noted that the granting of that licence was done 11 years ago, way before he was appointed Commissioner. But he also noted that people currently applying for firearm licence were being closely scrutinised now more than ever. “Under my watch, I have been very careful about who we (the Police Service) give firearms to,” he added.