Gail Alexan­der

All was not as it seemed with scrap iron yards which were found to con­ceal thou­sands of gal­lons of diesel fu­el in an "un­der­ground bunker," Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day main­tained, fol­low­ing con­tin­ued Beetham Gar­dens' con­cerns on the is­sue. Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day when she spoke at a func­tion at Beetham Gar­dens where scrap iron yards were cleared out and the iron con­fis­cat­ed by se­cu­ri­ty forces over a week ago. The is­sue arose at the launch of the Mak­ing Life Im­por­tant (MLI) project at Ex­cel School, Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of- Spain. It is the first of Gov­ern­ment's projects to start re­build­ing com­mu­ni­ties af­ter crim­i­nals el­e­ments had been re­moved. It al­so is geared at strength­en­ing ties be­tween res­i­dents and po­lice to keep crime un­der con­trol.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar vis­it­ed Beetham Gar­dens yes­ter­day fol­low­ing re­cent search-and-seizure ex­er­cis­es by se­cu­ri­ty forces in the state of emer­gency. There had been out­cries against the sit­u­a­tion by some in Beetham Gar­dens. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's launch, one of the speak­ers, ac­tivist Wayne Jor­dan, ap­pealed for a plan for scrap iron deal­ers who had lost their ma­te­ri­als. He said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and deal­ers need­ed to get to­geth­er on the is­sue. Jor­don called on Gov­ern­ment to re­place the "lit­tle" which res­i­dents had lost with some­thing bet­ter. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing af­ter Jor­dan, added sev­er­al state­ments on the is­sue to her pre­pared speech to deal with it. She re­it­er­at­ed a claim which Gov­ern­ment made in the Par­lia­ment on the week­end dur­ing de­bate on the emer­gency: That thou­sands of gal­lons of diesel fu­el had been found buried un­der scrap iron yards.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Let it be known that not every­thing is al­ways as they seem. I'm ad­vised that when the scrap­yard was raid­ed a bunker was found un­der­ground with 18,000 gal­lons of diesel fu­el which was be­ing kept to be trans­mit­ted il­le­gal­ly. "We have not tar­get­ed any per­son or per­sons. Our tar­gets are those bent on crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty." Fol­low­ing the func­tion, Beetham Es­tates' scrap iron deal­ers, in­clud­ing Joel Lee, were among res­i­dents who de­nied the "bunker" claim and raised con­cerns about Per­sad-Bisses­sar's vis­it to the area yes­ter­day.

Lee, who had at­tend­ed the func­tion where Per­sad- Bisses­sar spoke, told re­porters: "There is no 'un­der­ground bunker' in Beetham Es­tates. They might have found some­thing in Sea Lots west. They sent out in­vi­ta­tions to this func­tion to us and we didn't even get a chance to raise our con­cerns with the Prime Min­is­ter, so why in­vite us? "They say every creed and race find an equal place so we want to know where is such a place for us on the Beetham? "We are be­ing vic­timised. They are com­ing with false ev­i­dence on the seizure of our scrap met­als," Lee added. An­oth­er op­er­a­tor, who was very ag­i­tat­ed, com­plained: "I have three chil­dren and I go on the dump and hus­tle scrap met­al, now you come and close down every­thing. What am I to do?"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her ad­dress at the func­tion, said the de­ci­sion to im­pose the emer­gency was not an easy one "and there was much de­lib­er­a­tion up­on it." She re­it­er­at­ed that a "cri­sis of im­mense pro­por­tions" was avert­ed "So when I hear crit­ics of this de­ci­sion mea­sur­ing what suc­cess the state of emer­gency has had or will have over time, I know that it was suc­cess­ful from the mo­ment we avert­ed the cri­sis," the PM said, ad­mit­ting Gov­ern­ment has had to make some tough de­ci­sions. She said 56 guns have been seized by po­lice in the two weeks of the emer­gency as com­pared with 213 guns found in the last year. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there had there­fore been a 400 per cent in­crease in gun con­fis­ca­tion since the emer­gency.

She said the MLI plan was an­oth­er an­ti-crime plan, apart from the emer­gency. The PM said Gov­ern­ment was aware some com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in Port-of-Spain, faced chal­lenges from pover­ty, job­less­ness, col­lapse of sup­port­ive fam­i­ly struc­tures and lack of fa­ther fig­ures. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said chal­lenges al­so in­clud­ed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of street gangs "which of­fer nur­tur­ing, pro­tec­tion, friend­ship, emo­tion­al sup­port and oth­er dis­trac­tions for un­at­tend­ed, un­chap­er­oned res­i­dent youths." An­nounc­ing plans for Beetham Gar­dens, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Min­istry of the Peo­ple would op­er­ate a so­cial ser­vices desk in the area.