Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is promis­ing that the Princes Town re­gion will re­ceive a work­ing fire sta­tion “in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

“We will fix it,” as­sured Alexan­der as he toured the old fire sta­tion in Princes Town yes­ter­day. 

Cit­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns, in­clud­ing a ro­dent in­fes­ta­tion, of­fi­cers va­cat­ed the build­ing last Ju­ly and since then, it has re­mained closed. 

From then to now, how­ev­er, there have been at least sev­en house fires, two with­in the last few days.  

Alexan­der, who was part of a team in­clud­ing Princes Town MP Aiy­na Ali, South­ern Di­vi­sion As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mukhar­ji Ram­per­sad,  Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine and oth­er of­fi­cials, said the vis­it was prompt­ed by nu­mer­ous com­plaints from mem­bers of the pub­lic.

“Our Prime Min­is­ter spoke to both the MP for Princes Town and my­self and told us no mat­ter what we found here to­day, we must fix it. So we came with the in­ten­tion here to­day to fix it, and rest as­sured it will be fixed,” he said.

Alexan­der promised that the mat­ter would be dealt with ur­gent­ly. He added of­fi­cials were seek­ing to bring some re­lief to the res­i­dents, in the “short­est pos­si­ble time.”

Alexan­der said he would speak with ex­perts and stake­hold­ers to de­ter­mine long-term and short-term mea­sures.

“The word fix means it don’t have to be this (build­ing) but to get the of­fi­cers back up and run­ning and ser­vic­ing the area of Princes Town is what is re­quired. So it could mean ei­ther here, or there or there. But at the end of the day, the con­stituen­cy of Princes Town must ben­e­fit from hav­ing fire ser­vice per­son­nel here.” 

Alexan­der, who had al­so toured the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion, said there were al­so a lot of is­sues, which need­ed to be ad­dressed at that lo­ca­tion.

“One must ask the ques­tion, why it was not done in nine years, I can’t an­swer that. I can tell you what we in­tend to do, and we in­tend to fix it,” said the min­is­ter.  

Princes Town MP Ali al­so as­sured that they were work­ing ex­pe­di­tious­ly to save more lives and prop­er­ty. 

“A fire is trau­mat­ic to any­one, to any fam­i­ly. I can’t imag­ine what they would have been go­ing through and know­ing that some­thing could have been done in a faster time, and it was not. That was heart­break­ing.”

At present ten­ders from the Rio Claro and Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tions and in some cas­es, Pe­nal, re­spond to fires in the Princes Town re­gion.