Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Thieves made off with large chunks of a 68-foot met­al bridge across the Cap-de-Ville Riv­er, Ce­dros, over the week­end in a brazen theft of ma­te­r­i­al for sale as scrap met­al. The thieves used a blow­torch to cut away huge beams from the base of the bridge, as well as large chunks of the rail­ings. They left left be­hind small­er bits of met­al which were seen float­ing in the riv­er yes­ter­day. A woman, who lives near­by, said she saw a strange green van in the area on Fri­day, the day the base of the bridge was dis­cov­ered miss­ing. "I heard that some peo­ple cut up the iron from the bridge and sold it but I don't know who is re­spon­si­ble for this," she said.

Yes­ter­day, po­lice stopped traf­fic along the South Cen­tral Road, Cap-de-Ville, which links Ce­dros to the Dun­lop Round­about, Point Fortin, caus­ing de­lays and in­con­ve­nience for scores of com­muters. The woman com­plained that taxis were not work­ing in the area be­cause of the blocked road. "Now we have to walk out the road to get a taxi. It is dif­fi­cult for us now," she added. Pres­i­dent of the Granville Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil, Shankar Teelucks­ingh, said the road was a ma­jor ac­cess route from Ce­dros to San Fer­nan­do, as it by­pass­es Point Fortin. He said apart from large sec­tions of the bridge, scrap met­al thieves al­so cart­ed away Petrotrin lines car­ry­ing crude oil, WASA valves and cop­per wires from tele­phone poles through­out the dis­trict. Teelucks­ingh added: "When the state of emer­gency was in progress, the Gov­ern­ment said scrap iron deal­ers were op­er­at­ing with no li­cence.

"Gov­ern­ment must now es­tab­lish a cen­tral body that will pur­chase and reg­u­late all scrap met­al ex­por­ta­tion."

He said the il­le­gal sale of scrap iron was ram­pant along the south­west­ern penin­su­la of Trinidad with thieves steal­ing any type of iron. Of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Works, in­clud­ing tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers, vis­it­ed the bridge yes­ter­day. Chair­man of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Leo Dood­nath said the road was closed as a safe­ty mea­sure. He said the stolen sup­port beams had been in­stalled to sup­port heavy traf­fic but now the base had been weak­ened and it was dan­ger­ous for heavy ve­hi­cles to dri­ve over. Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Chan­dresh Shar­ma ex­pressed con­cern about the theft. "It is ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate that peo­ple will steal a bridge. Our en­gi­neers from the Works Min­istry will be on hand to look at an im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion," he said.

He said the theft was car­ried out by an or­gan­ised crime ring and was con­fi­dent the po­lice would ar­rest the thieves.