Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Bar­ry Padarath, has is­sued a re­sponse to com­ments made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les Robin­son fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­dress at the 50th Meet­ing of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence.

Padarath said the re­marks from the Op­po­si­tion Leader did not re­flect prin­ci­pled cri­tique. He said the Gov­ern­ment stands by state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the con­fer­ence.

Padarath cit­ed na­tion­al crime sta­tis­tics, stat­ing that 627 mur­ders were record­ed in one year and that there was a 42 per cent de­cline in mur­ders in 2025. He said the fig­ures are sup­port­ed by of­fi­cial da­ta and re­flect pol­i­cy mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion.