Cable thieves strike Fairfield again creating sewage threat

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Three weeks af­ter ca­ble thieves plunged the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Fair­field, Princes Town com­mu­ni­ty in­to dark­ness, res­i­dents are now fac­ing an­oth­er cri­sis af­ter ca­ble thieves crip­pled the com­mu­ni­ty’s waste­water treat­ment plant. The dis­cov­ery was made around 8.25 am yes­ter­day when an HDC em­ploy­ee found the plant, which ser­vices hun­dreds of house­holds, van­dalised.

The main elec­tri­cal con­trol of­fice was bro­ken in­to, and a quan­ti­ty of elec­tri­cal ca­bles con­nect­ed to con­trol pan­els, a stand­by gen­er­a­tor, and two step-up/step-down trans­form­ers were all miss­ing. Elec­tri­cal ca­bles were al­so miss­ing from two pan­el box­es at the rear of the plant. Po­lice said the thieves pried open one of the doors.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, res­i­dent Kevin Fras­er, leader of the Fair­field Com­mu­ni­ty Watch Group, said that around 8.30 am he was in­formed about the break-in at the plant and vis­it­ed the site, where he was told the ca­bles that keep the plant op­er­at­ing had been cut, crip­pling its op­er­a­tions. “I guess they did it for the cop­per,” he said.

Con­cerned about the ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the com­mu­ni­ty, Fras­er said he was in­formed that if the treat­ment plant does not re­sume op­er­a­tions with­in a rea­son­able time, it could re­sult in sewage back­ing up in­to the streets and even­tu­al­ly in­to peo­ple’s homes.

From the lack of po­lice pa­trols to poor­ly main­tained in­fra­struc­ture, over­grown bush­es and in­ad­e­quate street light­ing, he said they have brought these is­sues to the at­ten­tion of of­fi­cials, but he claimed they have failed to ad­dress them.

“It is an open play­ing field for the el­e­ments as they ful­ly un­der­stand that we do not ac­tu­al­ly have the full sup­port of the dif­fer­ent agen­cies and pro­tec­tive ser­vices.”

While res­i­dents do not con­done vig­i­lan­tism, he said they have no choice but to take mat­ters in­to their own hands to safe­guard them­selves, their prop­er­ties and the com­mu­ni­ty.

Fras­er said while Princes Town MP Dr Aiy­na Ali main­tains reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with res­i­dents and has helped “solve a lot of is­sues,” there are still ma­jor con­cerns that re­main un­re­solved.

“I be­lieve that her hands are al­so full and her re­sources are lim­it­ed to a point to rec­ti­fy every sin­gle is­sue that we bring to her ta­ble.”

He said on Tues­day, res­i­dents are ex­pect­ed to meet with HDC, the TTPS, WASA and oth­er stake­hold­ers, and they hope that once these mat­ters are ven­ti­lat­ed, they will be prop­er­ly ad­dressed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Deb­bie Mitchell-Richard­son, called for the re­sump­tion of se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols in the neigh­bour­hood. Con­cerned about the health ef­fects if the treat­ment plant does not re­sume op­er­a­tions in a time­ly man­ner, she said, “To flush the toi­let that might back up. I have a child who now do a surgery, this is very un­safe for him.”

Re­call­ing the van­dal­ism at the T&TEC Dis­tri­b­u­tion South Area on June 19 that left res­i­dents with­out elec­tric­i­ty for sev­er­al hours, she said, “This is not safe for us in the back here.” She al­so com­plained that most homes have open yards, adding that not every­one can af­ford to in­stall CCTV cam­eras.

“They re­alise it have no pa­trol, no cam­era, open ac­cess, any­one could walk in and walk back out. And most of these homes is sin­gle par­ents, hard­work­ing peo­ple who work 24 hours, doc­tors, nurse po­lice. When you go to work and come back, you re­alise things miss­ing from your place, so it is a tar­get for them,” she lament­ed.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day, the perime­ter of the waste­water treat­ment plant was over­grown with tall bush­es, and a large hole was vis­i­ble in the wire fence sur­round­ing the iso­lat­ed fa­cil­i­ty.

Po­lice of­fi­cers were al­so on the scene.