KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) is prepar­ing to ap­proach the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) Au­thor­i­ty in the com­ing weeks over what it de­scribes as se­ri­ous health and safe­ty breach­es at di­lap­i­dat­ed se­cu­ri­ty booths at schools across Trinidad, which it says place Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (NMTS) of­fi­cers at risk.

The NMTS pro­vides se­cu­ri­ty, jan­i­to­r­i­al and main­te­nance ser­vices to gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, schools and the ju­di­cia­ry. In a video shared with Guardian Me­dia, EPA mem­bers com­piled im­ages of se­cu­ri­ty booths show­ing miss­ing boards, bro­ken win­dows and doors, ex­posed elec­tri­cal out­lets, un­kempt wash­rooms, leak­ing roofs and pipelines, rot­ted floor­ing, worn fur­ni­ture, mud­dy foot­paths, and com­plained of rat and mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tions.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the chair­man of the EPA’s NMTS branch, Za­hir Khan, said he was aware of sev­er­al of­fi­cers who had fall­en be­cause of un­safe con­di­tions and were cur­rent­ly on in­jury leave.

“Our ap­peal is that we would have giv­en the com­pa­ny and the min­istries enough time to ad­dress these is­sues. We are tak­ing a more diplo­mat­ic ap­proach and are go­ing to re­port it to OS­HA as a vi­o­la­tion. We want par­ties to ad­dress these is­sues im­me­di­ate­ly,” Khan said.

Khan said the branch wrote to NMTS in April, re­quest­ing a non-cri­sis meet­ing and out­lin­ing the dai­ly chal­lenges faced by se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. Dur­ing the meet­ing, the branch raised sev­er­al health and safe­ty con­cerns at the booths, in­clud­ing poor light­ing, de­plorable fenc­ing, a lack of wa­ter and non-func­tion­ing wash­rooms at some lo­ca­tions.

“We held this meet­ing in April with man­age­ment and ex­plained to them what was hap­pen­ing, and their re­sponse was that they would look in­to it and try their best to ad­dress as much as pos­si­ble. We have not seen much be­cause there was a list­ing of 120 schools that we sent to them, and to date, there has been no im­prove­ment in these schools. There were site vis­its, and be­fore the start of the last school term, there were re­pairs to schools, but not the booths.”

Among the most se­vere cas­es, Khan iden­ti­fied Ma­yaro RC Pri­ma­ry School, Va­len­cia Sec­ondary School and Guaico Sec­ondary School, where booths have un­even sur­faces, bro­ken floors and doors, and no wash­room fa­cil­i­ties. He said sim­i­lar con­di­tions ex­ist­ed at the Land and Sur­vey Build­ing in Port-of-Spain and the for­mer UTT Val­sayn cam­pus.

He de­scribed the job as in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for of­fi­cers, who are of­ten re­quired to stand at school gates dur­ing peak hours to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of staff, stu­dents and vis­i­tors, while re­main­ing ex­posed to the nat­ur­al el­e­ments.

“All our se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers work 12-hour shifts. Peak hours are from 7 am to 9.30 am, then lunchtime from 11 am to 12.30 pm, and the af­ter­noon pe­ri­od from 2 pm to 4 pm. They can­not oc­cu­py the booths or store in­for­ma­tion. Our ob­jec­tive is to pro­tect life, prop­er­ty and in­for­ma­tion, and most of our in­for­ma­tion, be­cause of the de­plorable booths, gets wet. The di­ary and log­books get wet, and at times, in­for­ma­tion is lost. In some cas­es, of­fi­cers have to put di­aries in plas­tic bags to pro­tect them and re­lo­cate to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion.”

Khan said man­pow­er short­ages al­so meant that many of­fi­cers had no des­ig­nat­ed meal breaks and were forced to eat while work­ing. He added that the num­ber of of­fi­cers as­signed to each school de­pend­ed on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s fi­nan­cial dis­burse­ment.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion gives NMTS the con­tract to fix the booths. As the branch, we send the in­for­ma­tion to the com­pa­ny. They for­ward it to the min­istry. Oth­er than se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, vis­i­tors com­ing in­to the com­pound while be­ing in­ter­viewed are al­so at risk, as they may be be­side or in­side the booth and like­ly to be in­jured as well.”

Khan said the sit­u­a­tion had per­sist­ed for al­most nine years, yet of­fi­cers con­tin­ued to re­port for du­ty. How­ev­er, the EPA has ad­vised its mem­bers to keep away from im­me­di­ate haz­ards.

He said many of­fi­cers earned min­i­mum wage and had rent to pay and chil­dren to sup­port. At the same time, he not­ed that stay­ing away from work could con­sti­tute a breach of the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Act.

Ef­forts to reach NMTS of­fi­cials yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful. Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath and is await­ing re­spons­es.