Derek Achong

A 57-year-old busi­ness­man of Port-of-Spain has been re­leased on bail af­ter be­ing charged with be­ing in pos­ses­sion of five stolen man­hole cov­ers. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ve­jai Ram­lack­han, of St Au­gus­tine, was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Port-of-Spain City Po­lice on Sat­ur­day evening. 

The team of of­fi­cers, led by Sgt Mc­Shine was re­port­ed­ly on a search war­rant ex­er­cise when they ex­e­cut­ed one at Ram­lack­han’s two-sto­ry build­ing, on George Street, in Port-of-Spain. 

They al­leged­ly found a quan­ti­ty of cop­per and the man­hole cov­ers, which were re­port­ed stolen by the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. 

Ram­lack­han was charged with re­ceiv­ing and un­law­ful pos­ses­sion of stolen items by PC Thomas of the Port-of-Spain City Task Force and was grant­ed $50,000 bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace (JP). 

Ram­lack­han is sched­uled to ap­pear in court on Ju­ly 12. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Port-of-Spain may­or Joel Mar­tinez con­firmed the po­lice be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing the stolen man­hole cov­ers af­ter he no­ticed sev­er­al miss­ing in down­town Port-of-Spain, last week. 

He said that the po­lice of­fi­cers checked CCTV footage and vis­it­ed sev­er­al scrap iron yards un­til they even­tu­al­ly made the break­through in the case. 

“I was ab­solute­ly dis­gust­ed to find a cit­i­zen of Port-of-Spain was found to be in­volved in the steal­ing of the as­sets of the city,” Mar­tinez said. 

He said that he was grate­ful that the po­lice were able to re­cov­er the man­hole cov­ers as the cor­po­ra­tion would have had to in­cur high costs to re­place them be­cause they are con­struct­ed us­ing spe­cial heavy-du­ty steel. 

While Mar­tinez ad­mit­ted that the cor­po­ra­tion had en­coun­tered in­ci­dents of per­sons steal­ing street and traf­fic signs in the past, it on­ly no­ticed the stolen man­hole cov­ers, last week. 

Mar­tinez stat­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion would be re­in­stalling the cov­ers ear­ly this week as their ab­sence pos­es se­ri­ous risks to dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans.