KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Weeks af­ter re­ports of miss­ing equip­ment raised con­cerns about se­cu­ri­ty laps­es at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, May­or Robert Par­ris now says at least one key piece of equip­ment was nev­er miss­ing, while an­oth­er was sim­ply mis­placed.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Par­ris said a jack­ham­mer linked to the mat­ter had been found in the garage, while in­sist­ing a com­pres­sor pre­vi­ous­ly be­lieved to be miss­ing was nev­er un­ac­count­ed for.

The is­sue first sur­faced af­ter re­ports that an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of equip­ment had dis­ap­peared from the Cor­po­ra­tion’s Carib Street dai­ly-paid yard and trans­port hub, prompt­ing ques­tions about over­sight and the pro­tec­tion of State as­sets.

Par­ris said he had “wok­en up to some in­ter­est­ing news” af­ter be­ing in­formed the jack­ham­mer had been lo­cat­ed weeks af­ter con­cerns were pub­licly raised. Re­flect­ing on the con­tro­ver­sy, he said he had been taught through­out his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer not to re­spond pub­licly to every al­le­ga­tion. “Dad­dy al­ways said to me, it’s not every bone they throw at you, you run it down,” he wrote, adding that some com­ments did not de­serve a re­sponse and that lead­ers should fo­cus on lead­ing.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia, Par­ris main­tained that the Cor­po­ra­tion op­er­ates in a “high­ly sen­si­tive in­dus­tri­al en­vi­ron­ment” and said he could not com­ment pub­licly on mat­ters be­fore prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­duct­ed, while ac­knowl­edg­ing the role of the me­dia.

Ear­li­er re­ports on the mat­ter trig­gered con­cern among coun­cil­lors, with Al­der­man Vil­liana Ra­moutars­ingh say­ing she was alarmed that coun­cil­lors were not for­mal­ly in­formed of the is­sue and in­stead learned of it through un­of­fi­cial chan­nels. She de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “whol­ly un­ac­cept­able” and called for a com­pre­hen­sive re­port de­tail­ing what went miss­ing, the time­line of events, ex­ist­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, and cor­rec­tive ac­tions be­ing tak­en.

Par­ris had pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed the mat­ter was un­der in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing the CEO was on­ly in­formed about two weeks ear­li­er, al­though a se­nior SFCC source claimed the equip­ment had been miss­ing for rough­ly two months.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Par­ris crit­i­cised Ra­moutars­ingh for mak­ing pub­lic state­ments be­fore the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed.

“Based on the in­for­ma­tion I re­ceived, it ap­pears the equip­ment was sim­ply mis­placed,” he said.

Par­ris said peo­ple in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty should al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tions to un­fold rather than turn op­er­a­tional mat­ters in­to po­lit­i­cal dis­putes. He said the CEO had in­formed coun­cil­lors that in­for­ma­tion was still be­ing gath­ered and no con­clu­sions had yet been reached when the is­sue be­came pub­lic.

“The next thing, you saw the al­der­man on Guardian mak­ing a state­ment like that,” he said.

Par­ris al­so sug­gest­ed the mat­ter could be tied to wider in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ten­sions af­fect­ing cor­po­ra­tions across the coun­try.

“Be­cause at the end of the day, we don’t know if they were hid­ing it be­cause of pro­posed in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues,” he said, adding that such sit­u­a­tions were not un­com­mon in unionised en­vi­ron­ments.

“They will find an in­tel­li­gent way to down tools, and the politi­cians should nev­er get them­selves in­volved with that. That is what the ad­min­is­tra­tion is for.”

Par­ris said the mat­ter re­mained an ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sue and that the CEO would de­ter­mine what fur­ther ac­tion, if any, should be tak­en as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.