De­spite mul­ti­ple warn­ings from au­thor­i­ties, res­i­dents of Bam­boo #2 in Val­sayn are close to com­plet­ing the con­struc­tion of a se­cu­ri­ty guard booth for their com­mu­ni­ty.

As a re­sult, dri­vers at­tempt­ing to tra­verse the Bam­boo Main Road at the en­trance of Bam­boo #2 may soon be met with a se­cu­ri­ty check­point as busi­ness­man and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael said the booth should be com­plet­ed this week.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone yes­ter­day, Ish­mael said res­i­dents are fol­low­ing their lawyer’s in­struc­tion “to pro­ceed”.

The guard booth is in­tend­ed to act as a de­ter­rent to crim­i­nals at­tempt­ing to ac­cess the com­mu­ni­ty as Ish­mael said res­i­dents were frus­trat­ed over a spate of rob­beries and ex­tor­tion at­tempts hap­pen­ing this year.

He said res­i­dents can no longer watch their fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es be at­tacked.

“Vil­lagers met this (Sun­day) morn­ing to clean up the area around the guard booth. They al­so met to fin­ish off some mi­nor work on it. Some paint­ing was done. The ceil­ing is present­ly be­ing put on and the roof is fi­nal­is­ing right now. Things are mov­ing apace and the prepa­ra­tions have been put in place as well for win­dows and doors to come to­mor­row (Mon­day) so, we’re ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by about Tues­day or Wednes­day in­clud­ing the bar­ri­er as well. So, things are pro­gress­ing,” he said.

He added a T&TEC re­port is ex­pect­ed to be done on the booth.

“We had a vis­it yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day) by T&TEC who told us that they got a re­port that the roof was very close to one of the lines and T&TEC sent an en­gi­neer. The en­gi­neer, well he came and he laughed and he said that he does not know what they’re talk­ing about be­cause the roof is very far from the line. They (T&TEC) took their pho­tos and they are go­ing to do their re­port,” Ish­mael said.

How­ev­er, the chair­man of the Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin said res­i­dents were giv­en two vi­o­la­tion no­tices over a week ago and urged not to pro­ceed with the booth.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone yes­ter­day, Austin said res­i­dents were giv­en a 14-day no­tice to com­ply with its build­ing guide­lines if they wished to pro­ceed.

But he said if the rules are not fol­lowed, the cor­po­ra­tion will have to act.

“We gave the is­sue two vi­o­la­tion no­tices and we ac­tu­al­ly went a step fur­ther in ac­tu­al­ly giv­ing them cor­re­spon­dence … we gave them two pages, the CEO did so, and that was is­sued to them out­lin­ing the process which is a process oth­er per­sons else­where have tak­en for the same pur­pose. We would have al­so giv­en them 14 days to cor­rect or to come in, but to date noth­ing. So, I think we’re just about one week and some days in so we will just wait and see what will hap­pen af­ter those 14 days,” Austin said.

“They know what they should do so we will just wait to see what will hap­pen here. As a cor­po­ra­tion, as a coun­cil, our CEO, the staff, the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment, we are not go­ing to al­low wrong­do­ing to con­tin­ue … I know the Min­istry of Works (and Trans­port) have an is­sue with re­gards to the space, and we (Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion) have an is­sue with re­gards to the lo­ca­tion of the struc­ture. We have been mak­ing vis­its, so I know the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment head­ing by the CEO has been (us­ing) due dili­gence and we will see what hap­pens from here,” he added.

Austin said the cor­po­ra­tion has al­so no­ticed a re­cent trend in near­by ar­eas of peo­ple erect­ing guard booths but it was not some­thing that is en­cour­aged by the cor­po­ra­tion. Of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ad­vised against any vend­ing tak­ing place in the area.