Port-of-Spain: The government is tonight distancing itself from racial statements made by the Chairman of the Police Service Commission Nizam Mohammed, saying his statements were divisive, inflammatory, senseless, unwise and reckless.
Mohammed told a meeting of a Joint Select Committee of Parliament that there were too many people of African descent holding top positions in the police service and that he would use his office to ensure more people of East Indian origin fill those posts. Mohammed is a Trinidadian of East Indian descent and the government is also headed by a woman of East Indian descent Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
While the current Government is made up mostly of people of East Indian descent and was voted in with a wide support from persons of Indo-Trinbagonians, some government ministers had previous condemned Mohammed's statement.
A statement from the Office of the Prime MInister says Mohammed must be held accountable for his actions.
In a strongly worded media statement issues this afternoon, the Prime Minister's office said Mohammed's views do not represent the government nor the words of the national anthem…that "every creed and race finds an equal place."
The entire statement follows:
STATEMENT FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
When we see each other for who we are rather than what we happen to look like, when the grounds of suspicion fall away and no one looks for shades of differences to determine their own value, when realities are not created by pigments of someone’s imagination, then we would have arrived as a nation.
Within this context, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago categorically condemns the statements made by Mr. Nizam Mohammed, the Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) regarding the allegations of discrimination and the need for ethnic balancing within the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.
The five leaders that formed the political grouping that brought this Government to power is the broadest- based representation ever held in this nation and the insularity propagated by Mr. Mohammed’s reckless and senseless comments run against the very grain of the philosophy that now governs this country.
Mr. Mohammed must be held accountable for his inflammatory and unwise remarks which in no way represent the views of the Government.
Statements such as the one by Mr. Mohammed are divisive and serve no useful purpose other than to undermine the trust that is reposed in him as the Chairman of the Police Service Commission.
Our mission as a Government is to embrace everyone, to create a meritocracy based on people’s ability to do their jobs; race must not and will never be a consideration.
Whatever our ethnic origins, we are citizens of Trinidad and Tobago first and our Government believes the words of our National Anthem: “Here every creed and race finds an equal place,” express a philosophy that determines the way this Government functions today.
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