Ali­cia Llanos

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) is re­mov­ing a cell tow­er at Bates Trace, San­ta Mar­gari­ta. Yes­ter­day, TSTT is­sued a state­ment say­ing they had agreed to re­move the cell tow­er out of con­cern for the res­i­dents. TSTT said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed a meet­ing with res­i­dents last Fri­day. TSTT want­ed to re­as­sure res­i­dents that the small tow­er erect­ed in Bates Trace was meant to cov­er the im­me­di­ate com­mu­ni­ty it was lo­cat­ed in.

They said, there­fore, the lev­el of ra­dio fre­quen­cy emis­sions were well with­in the com­pli­ance lev­els set by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Com­mis­sion in the US and would not cause any harm, ad­dress­ing the res­i­dents con­cerns about health risks posed by ra­di­a­tion. Up­on hear­ing the news yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion for Ra­dio Fre­quen­cy Emis­sion Con­trol in T&T (Ar­fectt) Pe­ter Per­me­ll said res­i­dents felt "vin­di­cat­ed."

Per­me­ll said TSTT's de­ci­sion to re­move the cell tow­er was bought on by the "just and no­ble" ac­tions of the res­i­dents of Bates Trace. Last Sun­day, the res­i­dents, along with Per­mel, staged their sec­ond demon­stra­tion con­demn­ing the cell tow­er and de­mand­ing its re­moval. Res­i­dents be­gan protest­ing against the tow­er about a month ago, ex­press­ing their con­cerns over harm­ful lev­els of ra­di­a­tion which they may have been ex­posed too. Per­me­ll had al­so bought up the le­gal­i­ty of the tow­er, af­ter it was dis­cov­ered TSTT had no per­mit from Town and Coun­try Plan­ning. TSTT de­nied the tow­er was il­le­gal or that it re­leased harm­ful lev­els of ra­di­a­tion, but agreed to re­move the tow­er be­cause of the re­ac­tion it had re­ceived from res­i­dents.