WASA must revisit security measures, says Augustine

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has im­plored the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to bet­ter safe­guard its in­fra­struc­ture.

He made the call yes­ter­day, three days af­ter van­dals at­tacked four crit­i­cal wells on the is­land, leav­ing 17 ar­eas with­out a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply. Au­gus­tine had pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed the acts as “bor­der­line do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism” and called on po­lice to act swift­ly to ap­pre­hend the per­pe­tra­tors.

While ex­press­ing re­lief that re­pair works to three of the four in­fra­struc­ture were com­plet­ed, Au­gus­tine said WASA must get its house in or­der.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Sun­day, Bri­an Williams, head of WASA’s To­ba­go di­vi­sion, Bri­an Williams, re­vealed there were no CCTV cam­eras at the af­fect­ed sites.

Asked how the van­dals were able to ac­cess the wells, WASA’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Kristy Ram­nar­ine, said while it may have looked a sim­ple task, it was a well-co­or­di­nat­ed op­er­a­tion.

How­ev­er, dur­ing Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion at Bap­tist Grounds, Sig­nal Hill, yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine, the elec­toral rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Par­latu­vi­er/L’anse Four­mi/Spey­side, said he is not com­plete­ly con­vinced about WASA’s se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments.

“What we look­ing at is what se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments we ought to put in place. One of the things that con­cern me, for ex­am­ple in Bloody Bay, my dis­trict, where there is this tank farm that was done by WASA re­cent­ly. It is fenced in by barbed wire, but the gate is nev­er locked,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said a mod­ern ap­proach to se­cur­ing pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture is re­quired.

“I asked for WASA to take an­oth­er look at its se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. We have to re­mem­ber this is wa­ter. Wa­ter is an es­sen­tial ser­vice to hu­man life,” he said.

“If the per­sons can so eas­i­ly go and re­move the elec­tri­cals from the dis­tri­b­u­tion plants, what else can they do with our wa­ter?”

Au­gus­tine said en­sur­ing there is no re­peat is his main pri­or­i­ty.

“This is not long time where you have a plant and wish for the best. We have to se­cure our in­fra­struc­ture where wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty is con­cerned be­cause those could be easy ways to crip­ple our so­ci­ety and dam­age our econ­o­my.”

He said high­er fines for van­dal­is­ing pub­lic prop­er­ty would al­so act as a de­ter­rent.

“The mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed ac­tive­ly and lat­er this week, po­lice would dis­close if they have any leads on the mat­ter.”

Au­gus­tine again made a case for To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my, not­ing the lo­cal po­lice force he has been ad­vo­cat­ing for would come in handy in such sce­nar­ios. He said the lo­calised of­fi­cers would un­der­take these tasks while al­low­ing the po­lice to fo­cus on ma­jor crime-fight­ing op­er­a­tions.

“One of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for a lo­calised po­lice ser­vice, there are mun­dane tasks that we should be do­ing our­selves.”

He said traf­fic man­age­ment, man­age­ment of the ma­rine parks, for­est rangers and oth­er sim­pler tasks should be con­duct­ed by the THA po­lice force.