News Americas, PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Tues. Sept. 6, 2011: Trinidad and Tobago’s state of emergency has been extended by three months.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar told a rare sitting of Parliament that the state of emergency has prevented “a criminal uprising of untold proportions” and the crime crackdown is still incomplete.
The Persad-Bissessar government first issued a state of emergency last month following a spike in violent crime that saw 11 murders in 48 hours. The SOS involves an 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew in the two-island nation of 1.2 million people.
Opposition lawmakers, however, have criticized Persad-Bissessar’s crackdown for failing to net the “big fish” in Trinidad’s underworld.
