KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein says the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (UDe­COTT) is the ex­e­cut­ing agency re­spon­si­ble for car­ry­ing out the con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial po­lice post at the Ed­die Hart Grounds in Tacarigua. How­ev­er, he de­clined to say whether Gov­ern­ment ob­tained all the nec­es­sary ap­provals be­fore work be­gan on the unit on Thurs­day be­fore it was even­tu­al­ly stopped by the Tu­na­puna/ Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC).

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day on the is­sue, Ho­sein di­rect­ed all ques­tions on the ap­proval process to the state agency. Ho­sein said, “UDe­COTT is the ex­e­cut­ing agency for the project, so those ques­tions could be prop­er­ly an­swered by them at this point in time. What I will say is that we, as a Gov­ern­ment, sup­port this ini­tia­tive to en­sure that these po­lice posts are placed for the ben­e­fit of the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact UDe­COTT chair­man Shankar Bidassie and CEO Tam­i­ca Charles-Philipps yes­ter­day but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

How­ev­er, when pressed on whether the Gov­ern­ment had com­plied with the re­quired ap­proval process af­ter the TPRC halt­ed con­struc­tion at the Tacarigua site, Ho­sein al­so de­clined to give a di­rect yes-or-no an­swer.

He said, “At the end of the day, we are guid­ed through the in­tel­li­gence that we would have re­ceived from all of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and so on. As civil­ians, we don’t make the de­ci­sion in terms of what goes where. These mat­ters are al­ways guid­ed by the in­tel­li­gence agen­cies and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and as far as those mat­ters, that is as far as I will go.”

Ac­cord­ing to the TPRC, it was not in­formed that con­struc­tion would take place at Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah be­fore works be­gan, rais­ing con­cerns about whether the prop­er pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed.

The is­sue al­so sparked a po­lit­i­cal dis­pute be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, as the PM ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of us­ing its rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the TPRC to stop the con­struc­tion.

In a strong­ly word­ed so­cial me­dia post on Thurs­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the stop­page as “a most evil and vile act com­mit­ted by the PNM par­ty.” She al­so ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of hav­ing no prob­lem with “drug blocks” in Tu­na­puna but op­pos­ing a po­lice post in­tend­ed to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty.

Fir­ing back, Beck­les ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of act­ing as though she was “above the law,” ar­gu­ing that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives did not ex­empt the Gov­ern­ment from fol­low­ing es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

A day pri­or, the Prime Min­is­ter had an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 army-po­lice joint po­lice posts across T&T over the next four months as part of its an­ti-crime plan.

Ho­sein yes­ter­day de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s wider po­lice post ini­tia­tive, ques­tion­ing why the Op­po­si­tion would op­pose in­creased po­lice pres­ence in com­mu­ni­ties.

He said, “When we bring crime-fight­ing leg­is­la­tion, we are bring­ing now re­al boots on the ground. They are now op­pos­ing this. Why? Why are they op­pos­ing this? Is it that they are de­fend­ing their own­ers? Are they de­fend­ing the drug deal­ers? Are they de­fend­ing the crim­i­nals? I’ll go as far as that this morn­ing be­cause we, right now, are try­ing to bring back law and or­der to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He al­so echoed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of the Op­po­si­tion.

He added, “It is a po­lit­i­cal tool by way of a cor­po­ra­tion that they have con­trol of to stop a project. I would like to con­demn that po­lit­i­cal act. That is sab­o­tage, po­lit­i­cal sab­o­tage in my re­spect­ful view. I sup­port the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter… I sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment when she de­scribed that as an evil and vile act by the Op­po­si­tion.

“Who in their right mind will op­pose the con­struc­tion or the pres­ence of po­lice in their neigh­bour­hood? I can’t un­der­stand the po­si­tion that the Op­po­si­tion has tak­en on that mat­ter. In fact, I was flab­ber­gast­ed when I heard that per­sons ob­ject­ing to this.”

Nev­er­the­less, Ho­sein said the con­struc­tion of po­lice posts across the coun­try will con­tin­ue to be rolled out be­cause it will in­crease se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence with­in com­mu­ni­ties.

“You would see more and more of these po­lice force rolling out through­out the na­tion and per­sons are hap­py that we are go­ing to have this lev­el of en­gage­ment, this lev­el of pres­ence with­in the com­mu­ni­ties through­out our beloved coun­try,” Ho­sein said.

Asked the cost to con­struct one po­lice post, Ho­sein said he did not have the par­tic­u­lars.