One of the longest ex­ist­ing steel bands in San Fer­nan­do, the Hat­ter’s Steel Or­ches­tra con­tin­ues to suf­fer un­prece­dent­ed hard­ships twofold.

Man­age­ment of the Or­ches­tra in a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do pa­n­yard com­plained of loot­ing and de­struc­tion to the tune of $300,000, ac­cord­ing to the band’s trustee Odelle Mitchell.

They said this sit­u­a­tion was com­pound­ed by the ef­fects of COVID-19 and the de­vel­op­ment of the on­go­ing Wa­ter Front Project.

Hatters Steel Orchestra PRO Withfield Weekes shows the vandalised toilet area at the panyard at Lady Hailes Avenue, San Fernando.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer With­feild Weekes said they were no­ti­fied a year ago about the plans to de­vel­op the area by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port un­der the PURE Di­vi­sion. He said the then project man­ag­er said they would tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cate the or­ches­tra to the old Min­istry of Works build­ing ad­ja­cent to the pa­n­yard un­til works were done and a new pan the­atre was con­struct­ed for them.

Weekes said the cur­rent site served as home to the or­ches­tra for the past 44 years.

Weekes said loot­ers have bro­ken in­to the Hat­ter’s build­ing, van­dal­is­ing and steal­ing pans, paint, elec­tri­cal fix­tures and fur­ni­ture and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al.

Weekes said, “We were forced to give up a ma­jor part of the pa­n­yard and as a re­sult, it is un­safe for us to have re­hearsals or do any­thing here, we can­not func­tion as a steel band. We start­ed to see a lot of our equip­ment van­dalised and we are los­ing items.”

Chair­man Wayne Po­li­ah said “We nev­er stood in the way of the progress of this project, we sup­port­ed it. We loan a wa­ter tank to them and a rack (road float.) We sent a let­ter to the of­fice of the MP (AG Faris Al-Rawi). This kind of thing is go­ing to de­stroy this band.”

Li­ai­son of­fi­cer and trustee of South Cen­tral of Pan Trin­ba­go Rawle Knights said the site vis­it al­lowed him enough ev­i­dence to take to his ex­ec­u­tive to­mor­row.

Knights is call­ing on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to look in­to the mat­ter to fa­cil­i­tate the 90 mem­ber band be­fore fur­ther de­struc­tion af­fects them.

A Po­lice re­port was made to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice on Thurs­day.

Calls to Al-Rawi went unan­swered.