Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment was aware of, or par­tic­i­pat­ed in, a re­cent Unit­ed King­dom as­sess­ment on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while dis­miss­ing at­tempts by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to blame the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the coun­try’s gang prob­lem.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Beck­les re­spond­ed to com­ments made by Sturge fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a June 5 re­port by the UK Home Of­fice’s UK Visas and Im­mi­gra­tion di­vi­sion.

The re­port, part of its Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note (CPIN) se­ries used to guide asy­lum and hu­man rights de­ci­sions, es­ti­mat­ed that 186 gangs with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,750 mem­bers were op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go as of 2023.