By SEAN DOUGLAS Friday, October 30 2009

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GUN TALK: National Security Minister gesticulates at yesterday's post-Cabinet press conference where he revealed only two firearms out of 13 which wer...

NATIONAL Security Minister Martin Joseph yesterday disclosed that two of the 13 firearms stolen last Sunday from the Mi5 security firm in Woodbrook, have been recovered.

At yesterday’s post-Cabinet media conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s, Joseph said, “On the basis of the latest information provided to me yesterday (Wednesday) by the Commissioner (of Police), the Commissioner has indicated that to date there have been so far two of the 13 missing weapons recovered.”

Joseph admitted Government was having problems keeping its promise to bring new laws to tighten monitoring of private security companies. “It is taking a little while longer than we had anticipated because of some of the challenges the environment is posing. Those challenges are so much that it would be difficult for me to get into at this point in time. Needless to say, an attempt was made to see whether or not we could have amended the Supplemental Police Act and even that in itself also proved very challenging,” Joseph said.

He said the Supplemental Police Act gives the Commissioner of Police oversight of security firms registered at the Ministry. On reports that only 75 out of the country’s 300 security firms were registered with his ministry, Joseph said only companies with precepted (armed) officers needed to register and these amounted to 40 firms.

He said new laws would try to widen the net to include all security firms having to register, although such legislation is challenging. “Notwithstanding that, there is a structure in place under the Commissioner of Police for the regular monitoring of activities of these security companies that fall under the domain of the ministry.”

Joseph promised to talk to acting Commissioner of Police James Philbert to try to facilitate the Estate Police Association (EPA) which has been clamouring for a meeting to discuss the issue of greater control of security firms. Regarding complaints of long waiting times to get a new passport, Joseph promised quicker times for appointments to get machine readable passports (MRPs).

He said the time to process a passport has been cut from 54 days to a current 32 days, and given process re-engineering and extra staff, within about a week, this period should be down to “20-something days”

He said almost 60 percent of TT nationals possess MRPs, which he said is way ahead of other countries. He appealed to applicants of 26,000 unclaimed MRPs to collect them, saying their storage posed a security challenge.