GEORGETOWN – President Irfaan Ali has made a call on his fellow Caricom colleagues to step up their investment in border security, in order to reduce and root out drug trafficking, gun running and other forms of transnational crimes that continue to plague the region.

Speaking during the Opening of the Caricom Heads of Government meeting on Sunday in Grenada, the President said, because of the closeness of the countries in the region, illegality at one country’s border can effectively affect another country’s border which can in turn increase crime and criminality in that country.

“We have to ensure that we build stronger system so that our borders are not used as tools to affect other borders and other countries. We have to fight the drug trade, fight transnational crime and to do that we have to invest in security, border protection and port security and we have to meet the international standards and we are committed to doing so,” the President said. The President said lots of weapons are pouring into the Caribbean, and it is now time for keen attention to be placed on border security. He called for investments and special assistance to deal with the region’s crime problem.

“But our commitment to ensuring that the societies we built have safeguards that would is allow the type of weapons that are getting into our borders. Just as how we have to build our borders and we are investing in our borders and security system to ensure that our borders reduce the negative impact on other borders,” the President said.

In giving an update on the situation in Haiti, the President reported that while the situation may be far from perfect, Haiti is now much more stable as the region continue to work bring things back to normalcy. “Today, we have a Presidential Council, a Prime Minister and we remain strongly committed to the task of ensuring Haiti return to full normalcy, democracy and governance. Make no mistake, this was no easy task, this was not accidental, this was hard, sustained work and commitment from this region, President Ali said. Ali said the role played by Caricom to bring the situation to some semblance of normalcy in Haiti should not be understated. (Newssourcegy)…[+]