Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Gov­ern­ment says it will bring the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment to pre­vent any re­cur­rence of the un­law­ful dis­pos­al of 56 un­claimed bod­ies at a Cu­mu­to ceme­tery.

The as­sur­ance came af­ter Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, SC, ques­tioned what steps were be­ing tak­en to re­as­sure the pub­lic and re­store con­fi­dence fol­low­ing the grue­some dis­cov­ery.

Last Sat­ur­day, po­lice un­cov­ered the re­mains of at least 50 in­fants and six adults at the Cu­mu­to site, a de­vel­op­ment that quick­ly went vi­ral. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­scribed the find as “deeply trou­bling,” adding that any in­di­vid­ual or in­sti­tu­tion found to have breached their du­ty would be held ful­ly ac­count­able.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion sug­gests the mat­ter in­volved the un­law­ful dis­pos­al of un­claimed corpses rather than a se­ries of in­di­vid­ual homi­cides.

“For in­stance, five adults had morgue tags placed on them, and post-mortem iden­ti­fi­ca­tion had al­ready been com­plet­ed,” he said.

He added that the pres­i­dent of the Un­der­tak­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion had point­ed to the need for stricter reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the dis­pos­al of hu­man re­mains by fu­ner­al homes and morgues.

Alexan­der said analy­ses were con­duct­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre to de­ter­mine the ori­gin of the re­mains.

“We are com­mit­ted to restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence by en­sur­ing that these pro­ce­dur­al and le­gal breach­es are met with the full force of the law,” he said.

“The Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion is brought be­fore Par­lia­ment to en­sure that this nev­er hap­pens again.”

On Al-Rawi’s query as to whether the rel­e­vant re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty and the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed or pros­e­cut­ed, Alexan­der said the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice would car­ry out its in­quiries.

“At the end of the process, the pub­lic will be in­formed of the out­come,” he said.