PM blasts PNM for stopping work on new police post in Tacarigua

JENSEN LA VENDE and

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day chas­tised the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for stop­ping the con­struc­tion of the first po­lice post in­tend­ed for use in Gov­ern­ment’s new an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua.

In a Face­book post, the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed: “To­day, the PNM showed their ha­tred to the cit­i­zens of Tu­na­puna when, through their rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), stopped the con­struc­tion of the new po­lice post at Ed­die Hart Grounds.”

She added that the PNM “sent their rep­re­sen­ta­tives with a mem­ber of the TPRC mu­nic­i­pal po­lice to threat­en and chase work­ers who start­ed con­struc­tion.”

Re­spond­ing to the stop­page, the PM added: “This is a most evil and vile act com­mit­ted by the PNM par­ty that has no prob­lem with drug blocks in Tu­na­puna but is fight­ing against a po­lice post. The PNM must stop do­ing the bid­ding of the lo­cal drug mafia and start putting cit­i­zens’ safe­ty first.”

On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced the lo­ca­tion for 24 po­lice posts across the coun­try, with six more to be an­nounced soon. The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to es­tab­lish the posts over the next four months as part of its crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy. The posts will act as op­er­a­tional bases from which joint po­lice and army pa­trols will op­er­ate.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day, con­struc­tion work­ers were seen re­mov­ing a sep­tic tank from the ground while an­oth­er was atop a truck. Work­ers then re­filled a hole the tanks were ini­tial­ly placed in. There was al­so a near­by spot cor­doned off for fur­ther con­struc­tion, as it was pre­pared for a foun­da­tion of some sort.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar last evening, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of act­ing as though she was “above the law.”

Beck­les chal­lenged Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ac­count of what tran­spired, say­ing she was ad­vised that con­struc­tion be­gan with­out the re­quired ap­proval from the cor­po­ra­tion.

Beck­les, a for­mer plan­ning min­is­ter, said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the project raised ques­tions about whether es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures gov­ern­ing con­struc­tion on pub­lic prop­er­ty had been fol­lowed.

“As a for­mer min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Plan­ning, I am deeply con­cerned that the Prime Min­is­ter ap­pears to be­lieve that struc­tures can be erect­ed on pub­lic prop­er­ty with­out ad­her­ence to the es­tab­lished le­gal and ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures,” she said.

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of show­ing a lack of re­spect for the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion and ques­tioned whether the Tu­na­puna lo­ca­tion was an “af­ter­thought” in the Gov­ern­ment’s roll­out of its po­lice post ini­tia­tive. She said she was un­aware of any pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or ap­proval process for the Ed­die Hart project and claimed there had been no con­sul­ta­tion with the TPRC coun­cil, which has ju­ris­dic­tion over the area.

Beck­les is now call­ing on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to make pub­lic all doc­u­men­ta­tion sur­round­ing the project.

Among the in­for­ma­tion Beck­les wants dis­closed is when the de­ci­sion was made to es­tab­lish the po­lice post at the sa­van­nah, when the con­tract was award­ed, the pro­cure­ment process used and the iden­ti­ty of the con­trac­tor. She is al­so seek­ing de­tails on the cost of the project, its source of fund­ing and the date on which ap­proval was grant­ed by the TPRC, if ap­proval was ob­tained.

“No one is above the law, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter. The rule of law re­quires that every cit­i­zen, every con­trac­tor, and every gov­ern­ment fol­lows the same pro­ce­dures,” Beck­les said.

The Ed­die Hart fa­cil­i­ty forms part of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 joint po­lice and mil­i­tary posts across T&T. The Gov­ern­ment says the posts are in­tend­ed to bring se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel clos­er to com­mu­ni­ties, ma­jor roads, trans­port routes and busy junc­tions.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that Gov­ern­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives did not ex­empt it from com­ply­ing with es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

Turn­ing one of the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent de­scrip­tions of the coun­try back on her, Beck­les de­clared, “Kam­la, this is not a law­less dump.”

Pri­or to Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s post, TPRC chair­man Josi­ah Austin said no one had in­formed the cor­po­ra­tion be­fore con­struc­tion start­ed and the TPRC put a stop to it to pro­tect the site, which is un­der the cor­po­ra­tion’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

He added that sub­se­quent calls to his line min­is­ter and St Au­gus­tine MP, Khadi­jah Ameen, for clar­i­ty went unan­swered.

“What we are ask­ing is some lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, some lev­el of com­pli­ance, and even if not with us, this is a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ter, even with our su­per­in­ten­dent, our Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice De­part­ment, some lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion! We’ve al­ready had some sys­tems in place where se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty is con­cerned, and you know, that could be mar­ried with what is be­ing done there, but the an­nounce­ment came with a sur­prise, and now, right af­ter, its con­struc­tion, and no word to the cor­po­ra­tion, it’s quite dis­re­spect­ful,” Austin said.

Austin added that af­ter his en­gi­neers were told of the con­struc­tion, they vis­it­ed the site and some­one in­formed TPRC of­fi­cials that they were sent by the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s “SWAT De­part­ment.”

He said the TPRC was not in­ter­est­ed in stop­ping or try­ing to “stymie any progress where se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty of our burgess is con­cerned.”

He stressed that the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is what both­ered the cor­po­ra­tion, which stopped its coun­cil meet­ing to at­tend to what it deemed was an il­le­gal con­struc­tion on a pop­u­lar ground un­der its do­main.

“We are wait­ing for some in­for­ma­tion, and we will def­i­nite­ly be on hand to work with any­one that will add to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for that space, and by ex­ten­sion, the re­gion and the coun­try, but we re­al­ly need some in­for­ma­tion. We re­al­ly don’t know what is tak­ing place. We just saw con­trac­tors on the ground do­ing ran­dom work, and we re­al­ly need some an­swers right now.”

Con­tact­ed last evening, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia queries, ques­tioned what SWAT unit the TPRC re­ferred to.

He al­so shared a video show­ing a sim­i­lar con­struc­tion be­ing done be­neath the Grand Bazaar, Val­sayn fly­over, with a cap­tion that read: “For 10 years, all the PNM did was try to stop law en­force­ment from fix­ing crime, but not un­der my watch.”

He did not re­spond when asked about the cost of the posts.