TTPS, WASA strengthen response to theft, illegal activity

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is in­creas­ing its re­sponse to re­ports of lar­ce­ny and ma­li­cious dam­age at Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties, with the mat­ter re­ceiv­ing pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro met with WASA Chair­man Roshan Bab­wah and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Dain Ma­haraj, along with se­nior of­fi­cials, dur­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing to­day at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port of Spain.

The dis­cus­sions fo­cused on theft af­fect­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, as well as grow­ing con­cerns over il­le­gal wa­ter truck­ing and il­le­gal wa­ter ex­trac­tion.

Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers will thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gate all re­ports in­volv­ing the theft of in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing ca­bles and pipelines. He al­so pro­posed in­te­grat­ing WASA’s se­cu­ri­ty and CCTV sys­tems in­to TTPS Op­er­a­tional Com­mand Cen­tres across di­vi­sions to im­prove re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing of re­mote in­stal­la­tions and re­sponse times to in­ci­dents.

He al­so raised the need for stricter reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight of the scrap iron in­dus­try, along­side more se­vere penal­ties for of­fences such as lar­ce­ny, il­le­gal wa­ter ex­trac­tion and un­law­ful wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion. He said these mea­sures are in­tend­ed to de­ter ac­tiv­i­ties that con­tin­ue to cause sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial loss­es to the State.

Gue­var­ro said sus­tained col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the TTPS and WASA re­mains crit­i­cal, adding that both agen­cies will main­tain open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to sup­port po­ten­tial leg­isla­tive re­forms.

The meet­ing al­so ex­am­ined plans to strength­en the op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty of WASA’s es­tate con­sta­bles, with the TTPS ex­pect­ed to pro­vide tar­get­ed train­ing to help them re­spond to emerg­ing se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Al­so at­tend­ing were Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Richard Smith, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ter­rance Pierre, and Head of the Le­gal Unit Ram­dath Phillip.