Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has con­firmed re­me­di­al works on the aban­doned Good­wood mi­cro polic­ing unit will be­gin next week.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to a Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive sto­ry about soil ero­sion un­der­min­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, Au­gus­tine said he learned of the de­vel­op­ment on Oc­to­ber 14, one day af­ter its of­fi­cial open­ing. That same day, po­lice of­fi­cers were or­dered to va­cate the premis­es, which is al­ready show­ing cracks in its foun­da­tion.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly six inch­es of soil has been lost to the rear of the hill­side fa­cil­i­ty, with foun­da­tion steel now ex­posed to the el­e­ments.

Au­gus­tine said the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (Ude­cott) are aware of the sit­u­a­tion.

“They have re­port­ed that it is re­al­ly an is­sue aris­ing from dif­fer­en­tial soil set­tle­ment and that has since ne­ces­si­tat­ed ad­di­tion­al en­gi­neer­ing in­ter­ven­tions.  The last in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed from the min­istry is that their con­trac­tors and en­gi­neers will rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion this com­ing week,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said the THA on­ly agreed to the lo­ca­tions for the units in Good­wood, Ply­mouth and Sig­nal Hill, and no THA en­gi­neer or work­er was in­volved in the project.

But Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man is de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty as she queried whether any ge­ot­ech­ni­cal as­sess­ment was done be­fore con­struc­tion.

“How could a new­ly con­struct­ed po­lice fa­cil­i­ty be­come un­fit for op­er­a­tion al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter it was com­mis­sioned? You have to ask whether or not they did any sort of as­sess­ment be­fore they de­cid­ed to con­struct on this par­tic­u­lar site,” she said.

She said the de­vel­op­ment vin­di­cates the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s stance that the gov­ern­ment was rush­ing the projects and ig­nor­ing prop­er build­ing pro­to­cols.

She said the Gov­ern­ment must come clean on who will foot the bill for fix­ing the in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems. She said any re­me­di­al work must be over­seen by an in­de­pen­dent tech­ni­cal team be­fore of­fi­cers are al­lowed back on the com­pound.

Mean­while, PNM To­ba­go leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis has called on Au­gus­tine to ex­plain his role in se­lect­ing the site.

“Mr Chief Sec­re­tary, your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ex­tends be­yond cut­ting rib­bons with your UNC friends and try­ing to con­vince To­bag­o­ni­ans that we are win­ning. Hav­ing ap­proved this lo­ca­tion, you owe the To­bag­o­ni­ans an ex­pla­na­tion of the safe­guards ap­plied and the ac­tion you are tak­ing now.”

She ques­tioned whether the open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty was a “pap­pyshow” de­void of the req­ui­site checks.

For­mer PNM sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop said while he wel­comed the units, the ab­sence of To­ba­go con­trac­tors in the project was the first red flag.

“There is a say­ing in To­ba­go: hur­ry bird does nev­er build good nest.”

He said the na­tion is de­mand­ing to know who was the con­trac­tor for the project.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the clo­sure, Good­wood area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Megan Mor­ri­son said, “It is un­for­tu­nate that the com­mu­ni­ty is be­ing de­prived of the ser­vices that the po­lice post would pro­vide. All con­cerned have been no­ti­fied and we would soon have a  res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter.”