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The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing for greater clar­i­ty on the fu­ture of the US-in­stalled radar sys­tem in To­ba­go, af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Unit­ed States to find a re­place­ment be­cause the sys­tem is cost­ly.

Sturge made the com­ments dur­ing a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view on Wednes­day, stress­ing that the radar re­mains a valu­able se­cu­ri­ty tool but can­not, on its own, de­tect drugs in the Ca­roni Swamp or else­where, re­fer­ring to the $171 mil­lion drug seizure there on De­cem­ber 11 that had been at­trib­uted to the sys­tem. In­stead, Sturge said it works along­side drones, satel­lites and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try’s air­space and wa­ters.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed the sys­tem may not re­main in place in­def­i­nite­ly.