Gail Alexan­der

There had been se­cu­ri­ty present at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC)’s Ch­agua­nas de­pot when one of the Cor­po­ra­tion’s bus­es was stolen by an in­di­vid­ual in Mon­day’s pre-dawn hours, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­firmed yes­ter­day

Sinanan spoke about the mat­ter in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to queries from UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

A man re­port­ed­ly stole the PTSC Bus around 3 am on Mon­day from the Ch­agua­nas de­pot—close to Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion— and crashed in­to a store-front, garbage truck, van and house in mak­ing his es­cape. A woman was re­port­ed­ly crit­i­cal­ly in­jured. The cul­prit was al­so hos­pi­talised with in­juries.

A po­lice re­port said a man ac­cost­ed a fe­male se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and stole the bus.

Sinanan said he’d writ­ten PTSC re­quest­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter. He said couldn’t say ex­act­ly how many were in­jured— as well as ex­act­ly what hap­pened and the way for­ward—un­til he gets the re­port. Sinanan con­firmed PTSC is await­ing ad­vice on the cov­er­age from its in­sur­ance re­gard­ing dam­age caused

Sinanan, con­firm­ing se­cu­ri­ty had been present on the com­pound when the bus was stolen, added that PTSC has and con­tin­ues to pro­tect all as­sets at its de­pots. He couldn’t say if the se­cu­ri­ty firm at the Ch­agua­nas de­pot was Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty, which UNC’s Mark said gets $1 mil­lion a month for se­cu­ri­ty.

The min­is­ter said he didn’t know which se­cu­ri­ty firm was con­tract­ed to serve at that par­tic­u­lar de­pot since PTSC has sev­er­al se­cu­ri­ty con­trac­tors on many com­pounds.

He said PTSC’s cur­rent probe of the mat­ter is geared to iden­ti­fy any gap in stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures and the cor­po­ra­tion will take im­me­di­ate ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to “mit­i­gate against any fur­ther breach.”

Sinanan, who said the sit­u­a­tion was a po­lice mat­ter, said when the re­port is in hand, “We’ll look at the way for­ward.”

On an­oth­er query, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses said the draft re­port of the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team - man­dat­ed to get op­tions on T&T’s re­sponse con­cern­ing Venezue­lans ar­riv­ing in T&T in reg­u­lar and ir­reg­u­lar ways— is be­ing re­viewed.

The team was es­tab­lished by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to get op­tions on the mass mi­gra­tion is­sue. Moses said the needs of mi­grants in such sit­u­a­tions need­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach due to so­cial, psy­cho-so­cial, eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty as­pects. He couldn’t say how many such peo­ple have come to T&T.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, al­so said there’s been a 4.7 per cent de­crease in the num­ber of pa­tients at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Psy­chi­atric Ward: from 902 in 2015 to 859 in 2018.

He said a site vis­it by a Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal Tri­bunal in De­cem­ber 2017 con­clud­ed there was no need for re­lo­ca­tion of the ward.

Al­so yes­ter­day, the six new In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors—An­tho­ny Viera, Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, Dr Maria Dil­lon-Re­my, Char­rise Deep­er­sad, Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine, De­oroop Teemal— took the oath of of­fice. They joined three from the pre­vi­ous bench who were re­tained.