Res­i­dents of San­gre Grande are call­ing for more con­sul­ta­tion with the gov­ern­ment on crime-fight­ing strate­gies, say­ing that a state of emer­gency (SoE) alone is not an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Ojoe Road busi­ness­place yes­ter­day, head of the East­ern Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Ri­car­do Mo­hammed said while he sup­port­ed any ini­tia­tive by the gov­ern­ment to im­prove safe­ty and re­duce vi­o­lent crimes, he said there was a need for more in­volve­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the au­thor­i­ties and the peo­ple they serve.

Re­fer­ring to bomb threats re­port­ed at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day, which led to a no­tice­able de­ploy­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers to the east­ern town­ship, Mo­hammed said there were no clear chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to ease the fears of res­i­dents.