Marcelle, Padarath spar over Beetham power restoration

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle has ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of de­lib­er­ate­ly de­lay­ing the restora­tion of elec­tric­i­ty to Beetham Gar­dens, a claim Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has de­nied say­ing safe­ty con­cerns fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day's fire at a TSTT com­pound com­pro­mised elec­tric­i­ty lines in the area.

In a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts on Mon­day, Mar­celle said he was re­li­ably in­formed that elec­tric­i­ty was ex­pect­ed to re­turn to Beetham Gar­dens by 7 am, but al­leged that a UNC min­is­ter had in­struct­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) not to re­store the sup­ply by that time.

“One Se­nior Of­fi­cial was brought to tears. He in­di­cat­ed he has NEV­ER seen this lev­el of hate, spite and racism in his pro­fes­sion­al life!” Mar­celle wrote.

He urged T&TEC of­fi­cials to put the coun­try first and ac­cused UNC politi­cians of play­ing pol­i­tics with res­i­dents’ ac­cess to ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties.

Padarath, re­spond­ing on so­cial me­dia, said the fire at TSTT’s Laven­tille com­pound had com­pro­mised elec­tric­i­ty lines in the area, mak­ing safe­ty the pri­or­i­ty.

“I am ad­vised that the fire at TSTT's com­pound in Laven­tille com­pro­mised the elec­tric­i­ty lines with­in the area and there­fore it was a mat­ter of safe­ty that T&TEC took the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure the wel­fare and well be­ing of res­i­dents,” he said.

Padarath ac­cused Mar­celle of us­ing the in­ci­dent to stir di­vi­sion and put pol­i­tics ahead of res­i­dents’ safe­ty.

“Throw­ing out con­ver­sa­tions with name­less, anony­mous em­ploy­ees of T&TEC is an at­tempt to lend le­git­i­ma­cy to a bo­gus, fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ry,” the min­is­ter said.

Mar­celle had an­nounced that elec­tric­i­ty had been re­stored af­ter 33 hours with­out pow­er, thank­ing T&TEC of­fi­cials whom he claimed had “stood up and pushed back” in de­fence of Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dents.

He al­so al­leged that the Gov­ern­ment had hoped res­i­dents would be pro­voked in­to un­law­ful protests, al­low­ing au­thor­i­ties to shoot and kill them be­fore des­ig­nat­ing the com­mu­ni­ty a “CLOSED ZOSO AREA”.

Mar­celle said he had been prepar­ing to or­gan­ise a peace­ful gath­er­ing and me­dia brief­ing at the Beetham Gar­dens Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre if elec­tric­i­ty had not been re­stored by mid­day on Mon­day.

He said he had al­so arranged for a free gen­er­a­tor to be made avail­able from 10 am for res­i­dents to charge their de­vices, fol­lowed by a can­dle­light vig­il from 6 pm. He said nei­ther ac­tiv­i­ty was nec­es­sary af­ter pow­er re­turned.

The elec­tric­i­ty dis­rup­tion fol­lowed a fire at the ca­ble yard of TSTT’s Laven­tille Work Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day.

In an up­date is­sued on Sun­day, TSTT said the fire was re­port­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.45 pm on Oc­to­ber 24 and had since been ex­tin­guished. Mon­i­tor­ing re­mained in place to guard against pos­si­ble re-ig­ni­tion.

The com­pa­ny said no in­juries had been re­port­ed and that the cause of the fire and the full ex­tent of the dam­age re­mained un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.