TPRC chair, ministers clash over Eddie Hart police post

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

A stand­off erupt­ed at the Ed­die Hart Grounds in Tacarigua yes­ter­day, af­ter Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin, ac­com­pa­nied by his coun­cil mem­bers, ar­rived with a stop or­der seek­ing to halt works which re­sumed in prepa­ra­tion for a mo­bile po­lice post.

The con­fronta­tion un­fold­ed as Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen were on site over­see­ing prepa­ra­tions for the unit, which Gov­ern­ment says is one of 30 mo­bile po­lice posts be­ing es­tab­lished across the coun­try.

Austin main­tained that the cor­po­ra­tion was not con­sult­ed be­fore works be­gan and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dis­re­gard­ing the TPRC’s au­thor­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Ameen and Alexan­der re­ject­ed the chal­lenge, in­sist­ing the project was law­ful and would con­tin­ue.

Austin said the is­sue was not op­po­si­tion to im­proved se­cu­ri­ty, but rather the process fol­lowed by Gov­ern­ment.

“No one is above the law, and every­thing that every or­di­nary cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go would have to go through, I ex­pect that the Gov­ern­ment will al­so go through,” Austin said.

“That is on­ly ex­pect­ed. We are all for se­cu­ri­ty and the sys­tems will be put in place, but at the same time, at least some re­spect to the cor­po­ra­tion should be giv­en.”

Austin re­it­er­at­ed a point he made on Thurs­day, when the cor­po­ra­tion stopped the ini­tial works at the site, that the cor­po­ra­tion was not prop­er­ly in­formed about the works and ques­tioned why com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not made di­rect­ly with him as chair­man.

“The min­is­ter sent that email to our CEO, and I be­lieve that our CEO would have sent a re­sponse. That was not sent to me. Usu­al­ly, politi­cian to politi­cian, we li­aise, and the PS would li­aise with the CEO.” He added, “But noth­ing was sent to me, and noth­ing up to now, and I rep­re­sent the coun­cil. The coun­cil, they are here with me, and we have no in­for­ma­tion on this.”

Austin al­so chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment’s de­scrip­tion of the project.

“And this is def­i­nite­ly not a mo­bile booth.”

He said the cor­po­ra­tion on­ly be­came aware of the works af­ter con­struc­tion had al­ready start­ed.

“The CEO would have re­ceived an email from the CEO yes­ter­day af­ter con­struc­tion had start­ed, and we had to ver­bal­ly stop what was tak­ing place. Af­ter that, it was just ba­si­cal­ly say­ing, give ac­com­mo­da­tions to what is tak­ing place here, ba­si­cal­ly, you know, and that is not good enough.”

He ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine the au­thor­i­ty of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, not­ing the grounds fell un­der the cor­po­ra­tion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“You can­not con­tin­ue to try to take away the pow­ers of the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion. We are in charge of the space, and we have our pow­ers to ex­e­cute al­so.”

Austin said the cor­po­ra­tion had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure de­vel­op­ments on its prop­er­ty were prop­er­ly planned. “This is very dis­re­spect­ful, and they are tak­ing the high-hand­ed ap­proach, and we must do this on be­half of the peo­ple and what we stand for,” he said.

Austin said the cor­po­ra­tion’s en­gi­neer had al­ready in­struct­ed the con­trac­tor to stop work ver­bal­ly and that a for­mal stop or­der would fol­low.

“The en­gi­neer would have ver­bal­ly spo­ken to the con­trac­tor yes­ter­day and asked that they cease, and they com­plied, but to­day, with all of this, they are back”, he said. He said the cor­po­ra­tion had con­cerns about pos­si­ble un­der­ground in­fra­struc­ture at the site.

“We have no idea of what is tak­ing place. There’s no con­sul­ta­tion. We’re hear­ing mo­bile unit, but then we see con­struc­tion. I mean, we are in the dark with this.”

How­ev­er, Ameen re­ject­ed Austin’s chal­lenge, say­ing the works were not for a per­ma­nent po­lice sta­tion but prepa­ra­tion for a mo­bile po­lice unit.

“What is be­ing done here is re­al­ly a plat­form to put the mo­bile unit on. So, we’re not con­struct­ing a unit. We are bring­ing a mo­bile unit and rest­ing it there and it will be moved ac­cord­ing to the po­lice pri­or­i­ty,” Ameen said.

She ques­tioned Austin’s au­thor­i­ty to is­sue a stop no­tice.

“The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, as a le­gal en­ti­ty, has cer­tain pow­ers. The chair­man of a po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty does not have those pow­ers. No po­lit­i­cal per­son has the pow­er to serve any no­tice.”

She ac­cused Austin of at­tempt­ing to in­tim­i­date work­ers.

“Had I not been here, had the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty not been here, he would have come with that piece of pa­per to in­tim­i­date the work­ers and to bul­ly them to stop the work”, Ameen said, adding the project would pro­ceed.

“The process will go on. We are open to en­gag­ing all as we go for­ward.”

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Alexan­der warned that any in­ter­fer­ence with the works could have con­se­quences.

“And if they in­ter­fere with it, it’s a de­struc­tion to gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty. So, they should think about it,” he said, al­so ques­tion­ing the pur­pose of the doc­u­ment Austin brought to the site.

Alexan­der said Austin had pre­vi­ous­ly raised con­cerns about a pos­si­ble sew­er is­sue.

“He thinks that there’s a leak there. So, he brings the doc­u­ment prob­a­bly to test to see if there’s a leak in the sew­er sys­tem, be­cause that is what he’s talk­ing since he’s here.”

Alexan­der was un­able to give the cost of the mo­bile units but said it will be shared soon.

Ameen de­fend­ed the lo­ca­tion of the po­lice post, point­ing to crime con­cerns af­fect­ing the fa­cil­i­ty and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. She said more than 30 NGOs and sport­ing clubs use the grounds for youth ac­tiv­i­ties.

“You al­so have the ven­dors. Many of those ven­dors have been robbed. You have peo­ple walk­ing. We had a mur­der here as well,” Ameen point­ed out.

She said the po­lice pres­ence would help re­build trust be­tween com­mu­ni­ties and law en­force­ment.

“This goes a long way now in build­ing trust with the po­lice and bring­ing them back clos­er to the com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of the work is done. The plat­form is pre­pared. The space is pre­pared. So, there’s just to bring the unit now and put it here.”