Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment not to ap­point Aaron Hen­ry as chair­man of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT), cit­ing po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est and risks to job se­cu­ri­ty for es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son called on au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sid­er the al­leged ap­point­ment, sug­gest­ing Hen­ry could in­stead serve on any board that does not in­volve es­tate po­lice.

Hen­ry cur­rent­ly serves as chair­man of SWAT Es­tate Po­lice Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. Ac­cord­ing to Richard­son, he is be­ing con­sid­ered for the top post at the AATT. When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Hen­ry de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter.

Richard­son ex­pressed con­cern over Hen­ry’s pre­vi­ous re­fusal to al­low SWAT of­fi­cers to join the EPA, not­ing a strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two en­ti­ties. He warned that Hen­ry’s ap­point­ment could lead to vic­tim­i­sa­tion of EPA mem­bers cur­rent­ly sta­tioned at the na­tion’s air­ports and pave the way for in­creased in­volve­ment of SWAT of­fi­cers in air­port op­er­a­tions.

Echo­ing these con­cerns was EPA first vice-pres­i­dent and AATT branch chair­man Videsh Bhag­wan­deen.

“If this chair­man is com­ing in­to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, what does that mean for us? For our job se­cu­ri­ty? For the fu­ture of the AATT?” he asked. “Will it now be­come SWAT? There are many unan­swered ques­tions, and this goes against the gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed pol­i­cy in its man­i­festo.” Richard­son al­so raised the is­sue of a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est, point­ing to past gov­ern­ment dis­cus­sions about the pos­si­ble pri­vati­sa­tion of air­port se­cu­ri­ty.

“Now we have some­one with a di­rect stake in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty be­ing con­sid­ered for a key pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty role,” he said. “There’s a clear dif­fer­ence in phi­los­o­phy and op­er­a­tions be­tween in-house and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty. The prac­tices we’ve doc­u­ment­ed in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty have no place in a crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion like the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty.” He clar­i­fied that the EPA’s stance should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a rift be­tween the labour move­ment and the Gov­ern­ment.

“This is not a break­down in re­la­tions be­tween labour and the state,” Richard­son said. “In any re­la­tion­ship, dis­agree­ments arise. This is one of those mo­ments, but it does not amount to a rup­ture.”

While he ac­knowl­edged that the EPA has no le­gal grounds to block the ap­point­ment, Richard­son said the as­so­ci­a­tion will write to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to for­mal­ly ex­press its op­po­si­tion.