An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) yes­ter­day or­dered em­ploy­ees to de­sist from wear­ing cloth­ing with any form of num­ber­ing which could be as­so­ci­at­ed with or linked to crim­i­nal gangs across the coun­try, fear­ing this could lead to them be­com­ing tar­gets as they move around.

In an in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed May 16 and signed by act­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Man­ag­er Don­na Bournes, de­liv­ery lead­ers and of­fi­cers were told the di­rec­tive was based on ad­vice from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

The memo read, “With im­me­di­ate ef­fect, De­liv­ery Of­fi­cers are not to wear and or car­ry any item, cloth­ing, shoes, caps, hand­bags, um­brel­las or any oth­er para­pher­na­lia while out on de­liv­ery bear­ing the num­bers 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 as these num­bers rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent gangs across com­mu­ni­ties name­ly: Tyson, Ras­ta City, EBG, Six (6), Boom­bay Gang and Po­lice.

“This has be­come nec­es­sary due to the ac­cel­er­at­ed gang re­lat­ed shoot­ings, reprisals and oth­er in­ci­dents with­in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, per­son­nel are kind­ly asked to ad­here to this pol­i­cy to main­tain their per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ly de­liv­er the mail.”

Postal Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Shel­lon Trim wel­comed the ini­tia­tive yes­ter­day, say­ing said TTPost work­ers tra­verse every part of T&T, in­clud­ing ar­eas des­ig­nat­ed as crime hot spots.

While “hot spots” pre­vi­ous­ly re­ferred to se­lect ar­eas such as Beetham, Sea Lots, Laven­tille and Mor­vant, Trim said this was no longer the case, as any and all ar­eas were now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “ex­plo­sions” of crime.

“Some of these ar­eas have now be­come so dan­ger­ous that they (TTPost) would have been forced to sus­pend de­liv­ery in quite a few ar­eas,” Trim said.

He de­scribed this as a telling sign of the times they were liv­ing and work­ing in.

“As much as we would love to serve the pub­lic to the best of our abil­i­ty, at the same point in time, we can­not put the lives of our mem­bers at risk, so we are in sup­port of what the po­lice has ini­ti­at­ed and what they would have ad­vised.”

He re­newed calls for TTPost’s man­age­ment to meet with the union to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive risk as­sess­ment of the en­tire coun­try to de­ter­mine all the high-risk ar­eas. This, he said, is crit­i­cal to find­ing al­ter­na­tive means of serv­ing those ar­eas which would be af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion. He cit­ed pre­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions where de­liv­ery of­fi­cers had been forced to change their routes due to shoot­ings, as­saults and rob­beries.

Trim said work­ers had al­so been warned by res­i­dents in some ar­eas to avoid com­mu­ni­ties on cer­tain days due to planned crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia was told of a re­cent in­ci­dent in which one postal of­fi­cer was walk­ing with an um­brel­la with the num­ber six on it. She was re­port­ed­ly told, ‘Yuh lucky we not pelt­ing shots be­hind yuh be­cause we know yuh is TTPost...but Six is a gang area.”

Trim ex­plained the num­ber six re­ferred to the dis­trict the of­fi­cer was as­signed to and to eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy the equip­ment she need­ed and avoid mix-ups among the work­ers.

Po­lice yes­ter­day re­vealed that the Sixx gang ter­ri­to­ry was St Paul Street, Laven­tille Road, Low­er Gon­za­les Bel­mont ar­eas; Sev­en was Dun­can Street, Beetham, Sea Lots, Low­er Nel­son Street and Belle Eau Road, Bel­mont; and Up­per Nel­son and George Streets were the Mus­lim gang re­gion but al­so fea­tured some Sixx el­e­ments as well.

Ad­mit­ting no place is safe, Trim said, “There are some places that are just more dan­ger­ous than oth­ers.”

One such place is War­ren Street, St Au­gus­tine, where he said, “There is a part where post­men can no longer go and can no longer serve. It has come to that state.

“It is no longer En­ter­prise. It is no longer Beetham. It is no longer Pic­ton, even though it still re­mains hot, but now you have Orop­une, Cara­po, Pin­to, Ari­ma and so on.”

Asked what al­ter­na­tives could be of­fered to per­sons liv­ing in such com­mu­ni­ties now, he sug­gest­ed clus­ter box arrange­ments just out­side war­ring ar­eas.

He said TTPost could al­so look at em­ploy­ing peo­ple who come from those ar­eas but ad­mit­ted even that could pose a chal­lenge.

He point­ed to Laven­tille, where male postal work­ers could no longer op­er­ate, as he said gang lead­ers on­ly al­low women to en­ter the com­mu­ni­ty.

He es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 250-300 in­ci­dents had been record­ed against TTPost work­ers dur­ing the last ten years.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the memo leak was un­for­tu­nate but said it was a mat­ter they con­tin­ued to grap­ple with every day.

“It is clear that the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion was be­ing tak­en to en­sure the safe­ty of work­ers. I am very con­cerned about the safe­ty of all util­i­ty work­ers as they go about their dai­ly work rou­tine. The TTPS has al­ways been very sup­port­ive when called up­on from time to time when se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters do arise,” Gon­za­les said.

Mean­while, se­nior Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers ad­mit­ted a sim­i­lar pat­tern was ob­served among ven­dors and hus­tlers on the streets of the cap­i­tal.

An of­fi­cer said many of the young men are un­able to go in­to cer­tain ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tions due to on­go­ing gang war­fare, while moves were be­ing made by crim­i­nals in the East Port-of-Spain Plan­nings to take con­trol of Char­lotte Street and en­vi­rons.