In a voice note on Mon­day, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro made it clear that the mal­func­tion­ing of the fire sup­pres­sion sys­tem at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing had on­ly af­fect­ed the cur­rent ap­pli­ca­tions for firearm user li­cences (FULs).

In mak­ing the point that over 55,000 FULs were safe and un­af­fect­ed by wa­ter dam­age, T&T’s top po­lice­man re­vealed in­ter­est­ing in­for­ma­tion about the state of the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, which is lit­er­al­ly a stone’s throw away from the Red House, the seat of this coun­try’s Par­lia­ment.

Mr Gue­var­ro said the build­ing has been plagued by elec­tri­cal is­sues for “quite some time,” with even the use of mi­crowaves caus­ing low-volt­age prob­lems. He al­so high­light­ed mal­func­tion­ing fire alarm and fire sup­pres­sion sys­tems, cen­tral air con­di­tion­ing that does not func­tion in most ar­eas and a sev­en-storey build­ing that op­er­ates with just one el­e­va­tor.

“It is the sys­temic is­sues with this build­ing. These prob­lems are not new. They have been af­fect­ing the smooth run­ning of our or­gan­i­sa­tion for far too long and now they are ac­tu­al­ly start­ing to com­pro­mise our abil­i­ty to serve the pub­lic in an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive man­ner,” Gue­var­ro said.

While the dam­age to some cur­rent FUL files is un­for­tu­nate, were it not for that in­ci­dent, the Com­mis­sion­er might not have de­tailed the ex­tent of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the build­ing that hous­es the po­lice high com­mand.

From Mr Gue­var­ro’s ac­count, the build­ing’s elec­tri­cal prob­lems may con­sti­tute a fire haz­ard, the dan­gers of which may be am­pli­fied by the mal­func­tion­ing fire sup­pres­sion sys­tem and a fire alarm that was trig­gered in Feb­ru­ary due to on­go­ing re­pairs on a faulty elec­tri­cal break­er. This oc­curred when the pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion­er host­ed a news con­fer­ence. This false alarm may re­sult in an in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse from the build­ing’s oc­cu­pants if there is an ac­tu­al fire, with po­ten­tial­ly dis­as­trous con­se­quences.

Giv­en the Com­mis­sion­er’s as­sess­ment that the prob­lems “are not new,” he needs to out­line when pre­vi­ous com­plaints about the build­ing’s con­di­tion were made by his pre­de­ces­sors and what mea­sures have been tak­en to rec­ti­fy those is­sues.

It is note­wor­thy that when the new ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice in May, among the first com­plaints it made were about the lack of re­pairs and re­fur­bish­ment at White­hall and the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, both of which are build­ings where the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion held Cab­i­net meet­ings.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion moved quick­ly to bring those build­ings up to an ac­cept­able stan­dard. Giv­en the im­por­tance of the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, im­me­di­ate ac­tion must be tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to rec­ti­fy all of its is­sues.

It would al­so be ap­pro­pri­ate for the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide an au­dit of the con­di­tion of all of the build­ings that house pub­lic of­fices. If any are as poor­ly main­tained as the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, those is­sues must be fixed ex­pe­di­tious­ly as well.

While the safe­ty and em­ploy­ee com­fort is­sues of state build­ings are im­por­tant, it is nec­es­sary to point out that build­ings con­struct­ed with state funds are as­sets of the peo­ple of T&T, which each ad­min­is­tra­tion has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain in the best man­ner pos­si­ble.

State as­sets must nev­er be al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate in the way that the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing has.

All ad­min­is­tra­tions must al­so al­lo­cate suf­fi­cient funds on an an­nu­al ba­sis to en­sure that its build­ing as­sets are prop­er­ly main­tained.