Farley disappointed WASA vandalism suspects released

STEPHON NICHOLAS

Se­nior Re­porter

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment af­ter nine sus­pects de­tained in con­nec­tion with van­dal­ism against Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) in­fra­struc­ture were re­leased.

The sus­pects, in­clud­ing a WASA em­ploy­ee, were freed af­ter be­ing held for ques­tion­ing around April 1.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, Au­gus­tine said he had not been briefed on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­yond the iden­ti­ties of those ar­rest­ed.

“My dis­ap­point­ment on­ly stems from the fact I re­al­ly want the cul­prits to pay for it. I am not sure how much ev­i­dence the po­lice has.”

He said the af­fect­ed sites had no CCTV cov­er­age or se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence at the time of the at­tacks.

“I did make a call for tight­ened se­cu­ri­ty around these fa­cil­i­ties. I re­al­ly would hope the cul­prits can be brought to bear some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what they did be­cause it cost the State a lot to have these elec­tri­cal in­stalled at all these fa­cil­i­ties.”

The van­dal­ism oc­curred be­tween March 27 and 28, af­fect­ing elec­tri­cal sys­tems at wells in Arnos Vale, Bloody Vay, Ba­co­let and along the Claude Noel High­way in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The dam­age dis­rupt­ed wa­ter sup­ply across the is­land, leav­ing around 17 com­mu­ni­ties, from Crown Point to Par­latu­vi­er, with dry taps or low pres­sure.

Au­thor­i­ties es­ti­mat­ed about 2.1 mil­lion gal­lons of wa­ter were lost dai­ly as a re­sult.

The dis­rup­tion came as To­ba­go was prepar­ing for the busy East­er pe­ri­od, with thou­sands of vis­i­tors ex­pect­ed.