Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion are call­ing for ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress de­plorable con­di­tions at their sta­tion, claim­ing re­peat­ed com­plaints to se­nior of­fi­cers have been ig­nored for years.

The of­fi­cers, who asked to re­main anony­mous, claimed that the De Ver­teuil Street build­ing is in­fest­ed with rats, has leak­ing ceil­ings, on­ly one func­tion­ing toi­let, no work­ing se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, and poor elec­tri­cal wiring.

“The light flick­ers and blinks all the time. A few weeks ago, a light switch was spark­ing. AC on­ly func­tions well in the ASP and in­spec­tor dorms,” the of­fi­cers said.

Oth­er is­sues high­light­ed by the of­fi­cers in­clude the sta­tion’s pris­on­er cell be­ing used for stor­age, no light­ing on the com­pound, and no prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tion in the fe­male dorm for the more than 30 women as­signed there, with mat­tress­es even stored in the small fe­male re­stroom.

They added that lock­ers are shared among of­fi­cers and com­plained that the sta­tion’s lo­ca­tion, at the bot­tom of a hill, pre­vents them from see­ing who is ap­proach­ing the build­ing.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SWA), ASP Ish­mael Pitt, vis­it­ed the sta­tion yes­ter­day.

In an in­ter­view af­ter his vis­it, Pitt ad­mit­ted to ob­serv­ing some of the is­sues high­light­ed by the of­fi­cers. He said they were able to iden­ti­fy that the size of the build­ing in re­la­tion to the num­ber of of­fi­cers housed was in­ad­e­quate and some­times the toi­let was not func­tion­al.

“Mind you, when I was there, it was. So it’s not a per­fect en­vi­ron­ment.  It’s not with­out chal­lenge,” Pitt said.

He said the next course of ac­tion will be to speak to the per­son in charge of main­te­nance at the sta­tion and the As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice, Shash Ma­haraj.

“By to­mor­row, please, God.  You know, in terms of speak­ing to the per­sons who have that lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, those dis­cus­sions will start. So we will start in­ter­nal first, and then we will go ex­ter­nal,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed ASP Ma­haraj, but the call was dis­con­nect­ed, and sub­se­quent at­tempts to reach him were un­suc­cess­ful.

Al­so vis­it­ing the build­ing yes­ter­day was the Chair­man of the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Ray­mond Co­zi­er, who agreed that the space was in­ad­e­quate for the of­fi­cers sta­tioned there. He said a month­ly re­port was sub­mit­ted to the coun­cil, but no men­tion of the poor con­di­tions had been raised.

Co­zi­er not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion had been lob­by­ing for a new sta­tion for sev­er­al years and would soon meet with Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen to dis­cuss the mat­ter, as it is al­ready in­clud­ed in the draft es­ti­mates.

“It’s a pro­pos­al that’s al­ready in progress,” he said.

Ques­tions were al­so sent to Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, but up to news time, no re­spons­es were re­ceived.