Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has con­firmed that the work­ers seen on a so­cial me­dia video re­mov­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date’s ban­ner from a light pole in the Table­land/Moru­ga con­stituen­cy were act­ing on be­half of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS said in keep­ing with its com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing pub­lic or­der and safe­ty dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed to de­ter­mine whether any laws were breached and to iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved. 

“Our in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­firmed that the in­di­vid­u­als seen in the video re­mov­ing the ban­ner were con­tract­ed work­ers en­gaged by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC). This was ver­i­fied through a for­mal state­ment is­sued by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive at T&TEC,” the TTPS said.

“Ac­cord­ing to T&TEC, the re­moval of the ban­ners was in line with the com­mis­sion’s stan­dard pro­ce­dures, which re­quire all en­ti­ties to ob­tain pri­or per­mis­sion be­fore in­stalling ma­te­ri­als on or near T&TEC in­fra­struc­ture. The process in­cludes a site vis­it, a quo­ta­tion for in­stal­la­tion and re­moval, and ad­di­tion­al ap­provals from the rel­e­vant re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion. Ban­ners that were in­stalled with­out the prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion were re­moved in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished guide­lines.”

The re­lease added that act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Op­er­a­tions, Curt Si­mon, the Gold Com­man­der for the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, ini­ti­at­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and has al­so en­gaged Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Kirk of the South­ern Di­vi­sion to fa­cil­i­tate meet­ings with all stake­hold­ers, with a view to ad­vis­ing them on ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct in the lead-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion. 

The TTPS as­sured that it would con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor all elec­tion-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties close­ly and urged cit­i­zens to re­port any in­ci­dents of con­cern through of­fi­cial TTPS chan­nels.    

On Mon­day, a 20-feet ban­ner be­long­ing to UNC can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin was re­moved by work­ers claim­ing to have been hired by T&TEC. Ben­jamin, how­ev­er, ques­tioned whether they were gen­uine or if it was the ac­tions of her po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, since sev­er­al of her ban­ners and posters in the con­stituen­cy were ei­ther re­moved or van­dalised.  At­tempts to con­tact Ben­jamin on her cell­phone yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, PNM can­di­date Lisa At­wa­ter al­so com­plained that her posters and ban­ners were be­ing van­dalised. She told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that she had video ev­i­dence which she in­tend­ed to take to the po­lice.