Ali­cia Llanos and Kei­th Matthews

Res­i­dents of Bates Trace, San­ta Mar­gari­ta, are de­mand­ing the re­moval of a cel­lu­lar tow­er be­ing con­struct­ed in their area. The res­i­dents are ask­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) to re­move the tow­er, over con­cerns that the lev­els of ra­di­a­tion be­ing omit­ted by the tow­er could pose se­vere health risks. They are al­so con­demn­ing TSTT's fail­ure to con­sult the res­i­dents be­fore con­struc­tion of the tow­er. Yes­ter­day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 res­i­dents gath­ered in front of the tow­er to protest its con­struc­tion. Present at the protest were Pro­fes­sor Stephan Gift and pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion for Ra­dio Fre­quen­cy Emis­sion Con­trol in T&T (Ar­FECTT) Pe­ter Per­me­ll. Res­i­dent Mau­risa Find­lay said the con­struc­tion of the tow­er start­ed two weeks ago. She said TSTT had of­fered an­oth­er res­i­dent a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey to build the tow­er on her prop­er­ty.

Find­lay said res­i­dents were ex­treme­ly con­cerned about the health risks posed by ex­po­sure to ra­di­a­tion, the man­ner in which TSTT dis­re­gard­ed res­i­dents' opin­ion in the con­struc­tion of the tow­er and how the tow­er could im­pact on prop­er­ty val­ues. She said be­fore con­struc­tion, the res­i­dents were not con­sult­ed or in­formed by TSTT of its plans to build the tow­er with­in such close prox­im­i­ty to their homes. Per­me­ll told pro­test­ers that TSTT had dis­played "cal­lous and in­con­sid­er­ate be­hav­iour to­wards the res­i­dents." He con­demned TSTT for not hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the res­i­dents. Per­me­ll re­vealed that af­ter pre­lim­i­nary checks, TSTT had not re­ceived any ap­proval from Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, mak­ing the tow­er "il­le­gal." Gift said he un­der­stood res­i­dents' con­cerns about health risks posed by ex­po­sure to ra­di­a­tion.

He said al­though the tow­er omit­ted what was deemed as a safe lev­el of ra­di­a­tion by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, there had been sci­en­tif­ic proof that these lev­els could still be harm­ful to liv­ing or­gan­isms. He said in a study con­duct­ed by Ger­man sci­en­tists, it was found that can­cer was more preva­lent in those who lived in close prox­im­i­ty to cel­lu­lar tow­ers. Gift said chil­dren were more sus­cep­ti­ble to the dan­gers of ra­di­a­tion and sup­port­ed the res­i­dents' calls to have the tow­er re­moved. Find­lay said she hoped the protest would grab the at­ten­tion of TSTT and that the tow­er would be re­moved. She said the res­i­dents had no hard feel­ings to­wards the res­i­dent who al­lowed the tow­er to be built on her prop­er­ty.

More in­fo

?Ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Gift, ex­po­sure to ra­di­tion can cause:

1. Can­cer

2. Neu­ro­log­i­cal prob­lems

3. Per­sis­tent headaches

4. Loss of ap­petite - Dam­age to brain, heart and blood cells

6. Growth dis­tur­bances in chil­dren

7. Ner­vous sys­tem prob­lems

TSTT re­sponds

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­spond­ed to the con­cerns of the res­i­dents of Bates Trace, San­ta Mar­gari­ta. In a re­lease yes­ter­day, TSTT said it had planned to meet with the res­i­dents to dis­cuss their health and safe­ty con­cerns. TSTT con­firmed that the com­pa­ny had fol­lowed the ap­proval process with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) in erect­ing the tow­er. Ad­dress­ing the health safe­ty con­cerns, TSTT said it's sys­tems were mea­sured at ra­dio fre­quen­cy lev­els that were sig­nif­i­canty safer than the ac­cept­able lev­els set by the TATT. "While TSTT un­der­stands the con­cerns of res­i­dents, the com­pa­ny as­sures that its cel­lu­lar net­work meets and ex­ceeds in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards," the re­lease stat­ed. TSTT said the tow­er was erect­ed to re­move gaps in cel­lu­lar ser­vice in the area where there was an in­creased pub­lic de­mand for cel­lu­lar ac­cess. The com­pa­ny said through di­a­logue with the res­i­dents, it hoped to have the mat­ter rec­ti­fied.