Ameen tells TPRC chair to put Eddie Hart police post challenge to rest

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sas­ca.wil­[email protected]

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin should now put to rest his chal­lenge against the po­lice post at the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation Ground n Tacarigua, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said yes­ter­day.

Ameen ex­pressed this view dur­ing an in­ter­view with the me­dia at the fu­ner­al of Re­form/Man­a­ham­bre coun­cil­lor Vashti Sookoo at the Shore of Peace, South Oropouche.

Fol­low­ing the stand-off be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Austin over the in­stal­la­tion of the post, Ameen said sev­er­al con­stituents had ex­pressed sup­port for and wel­comed the ini­tia­tive.

“We have had a mur­der in the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah. We have had sev­er­al ven­dors robbed. We have had rapes,” Ameen said.

“There are peo­ple who go out as ear­ly as 5 am to walk in that sa­van­nah and stay very late. We have dozens of youth groups in that area and that is on­ly on the sa­van­nah. But, in the sur­round­ing ar­eas, you have the bus route and the East­ern Main Road. You have the com­mu­ni­ties in Tacarigua there that feel safer. So that is one ex­am­ple of a po­lice post and the im­pact it will have on the num­ber of stake­hold­ers that will be pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed. I think the chair­man of Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion should re­alise that he has run his course.”

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy, the po­lice post has been in­stalled at the lo­ca­tion, with fi­nal works now be­ing com­plet­ed.

The post is one of 30 joint po­lice posts to be built through­out the coun­try as part of Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est an­ti-crime dri­ve.

Ameen said Austin first raised con­cerns about a lack of con­sul­ta­tion, but said she be­lieves the is­sue is that he was “find­ing it hard to ac­cept that he is no longer in charge, that his par­ty is no longer in charge.” She said the Gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive is geared to­wards keep­ing the en­tire coun­try safer.

Ameen said Austin al­so raised con­cerns about Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) lines at the site, but NGC has since in­di­cat­ed the lines were in­ac­tive and posed no dan­ger.

“I am not sure what he is say­ing now, but it seems as though I think he has run his course. I think he should just let it die a nat­ur­al death now.”

She not­ed that if Austin ini­ti­ates le­gal ac­tion, the mon­ey to pur­sue that would not come from state funds.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Austin re­it­er­at­ed that the cen­tral is­sue was not the es­tab­lish­ment of the post but the man­ner in which Gov­ern­ment chose to ex­e­cute this pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive.

In a What­sApp mes­sage, he said the TPRC’s calls for con­sul­ta­tion were nev­er in­tend­ed to ob­struct the project but to en­sure it was prop­er­ly planned, that le­git­i­mate in­fra­struc­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns were ad­dressed and that the cor­po­ra­tion and af­fect­ed stake­hold­ers un­der­stood the im­pli­ca­tions.

“Imag­ine yes­ter­day, we would’ve wit­nessed the fenc­ing fol­lowed by paving of the “po­lice post,” which seems more like a po­lice sta­tion now, but we al­ready have a con­tract award­ed for grass pavers to main­tain the green­ery of the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty. Yet, with­out con­sul­ta­tion, they’ve gone ahead and wast­ed tax­pay­ers’ monies where this could have been utilised else­where for some of those many bad roads we now have in the coun­try.”

He said there is al­so a larg­er prin­ci­ple at stake.

“Gov­ern­ment can­not take the po­si­tion that be­cause it is Gov­ern­ment, it can im­ple­ment projects wher­ev­er and how­ev­er it choos­es, with­out re­gard for the statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of lo­cal gov­ern­ment or the le­git­i­mate in­ter­ests of stake­hold­ers. To­day it is Ed­die Hart Grounds. To­mor­row it could be an­oth­er recre­ation­al space, com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ty or pub­lic as­set un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.”

Austin added that the is­sue is not a po­lit­i­cal dis­pute over a po­lice post, but about gov­er­nance, re­spect for stake­hold­ers and the prop­er process by which pub­lic projects are un­der­tak­en.

“The TPRC sup­ports the ob­jec­tive of im­prov­ing pub­lic safe­ty. We sim­ply be­lieve that pub­lic safe­ty and de­vel­op­ment must be pur­sued along­side prop­er con­sul­ta­tion, re­spon­si­ble plan­ning and re­spect for the in­sti­tu­tions and com­mu­ni­ties di­rect­ly af­fect­ed,” he said.

Austin added that good gov­er­nance is not gov­ern­ment do­ing what­ev­er it wants be­cause it can.

“It is about gov­ern­ment do­ing what is nec­es­sary, but do­ing it prop­er­ly, re­spon­si­bly and with due re­gard for those who have a le­git­i­mate in­ter­est in the out­come.”