Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is plan­ning to hire more se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at HDC sites fol­low­ing a string of bur­glar­ies at the Gol­con­da Es­tates. The lat­est bur­glary oc­curred at Ridge­wood Gar­dens, be­tween 1 pm on New Year's Day and 6 am yes­ter­day. Po­lice said the thieves ripped through the door lead­ing to the bath­room and stole over $12,000 worth of pow­er tools from con­trac­tor An­tho­ny Suther­land.

Suther­land said he se­cured the tools in the bath­room around 1 pm on New Year's Day af­ter com­plet­ing some weld­ing works at a house. When he re­turned around 6 am yes­ter­day, he dis­cov­ered the weld­ing plant, chop saws and elec­tric drills miss­ing. Of­fi­cers dust­ed the door for fin­ger­prints but were un­able to re­trieve any. Suther­land said he did not know what to do. "Right now I just pac­ing up and down. I frus­trat­ed. I wish that some­one could as­sist me in get­ting back my tools," Suther­land said.

The con­trac­tor, who is hired by main con­trac­tor TN Ram­nath, had been work­ing through­out the Christ­mas sea­son, prepar­ing 35 hous­es for dis­tri­b­u­tion. Mean­while, sources at the site said that was the fourth bur­glary at the site. Thieves, they said, had been break­ing through the ceil­ing and doors of the hous­es, steal­ing bath­room fix­tures, cup­boards and oth­er valu­ables. Even though se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were on the site, the bur­glar­ies con­tin­ued. Yes­ter­day, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said he in­tend­ed to hire ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers to man the GHDC sites.

He said: "It is re­gret­table that we must now spend more mon­ey on guard­ing emp­ty hous­es. Those units can­not be dis­trib­uted as a re­sult of the in­ef­fi­cien­cies of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. "Many of these units are in need of re­pairs. The es­tates are in need of in­fra­struc­tur­al work so we can­not dis­trib­ute homes so we have no choice but to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty guards at the tax­pay­ers ex­pense." Al­ready, Mooni­lal said $20 mil­lion was be­ing spent an­nu­al­ly on 20 HDC es­tates. The min­is­ter al­so said he hoped to speak with se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments in the Oropouche East con­stituen­cy, es­pe­cial­ly with­in the HDC set­tle­ments.