RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Res­i­dents of Heights of Aripo are beg­ging the au­thor­i­ties to in­stall CCTV cam­eras through­out the rur­al hill­side com­mu­ni­ty, fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of 21-year-old Kei­thisha Cud­joe’s body there.

Res­i­dents said they felt cheat­ed and ne­glect­ed, say­ing that while mil­lions of dol­lars have been al­lo­cat­ed to ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’, their re­quests for a po­lice post, street lights through­out the vil­lage and sur­veil­lance cam­eras have been ig­nored.

Vil­lager Harold Di­az told Guardian me­dia yes­ter­day that af­ter An­drea Bharatt’s case, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma Pen­ne­lope Beck­les had im­ple­ment­ed a street light­ing pro­gramme in the area, but on­ly par­tial­ly.

“To be hon­est this is a re­al­ly an old sore. We have been deal­ing with this for ages. The re­al­i­ty is we have been call­ing for po­lice post over the last cou­ple of years but noth­ing ever ma­te­ri­al­ized...here we are, one year lat­er, again, go­ing through a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion,” Di­az said.

“Now of course it is very dis­heart­en­ing when you look at every­thing go­ing on peo­ple will blame the res­i­dents. But the truth is this is a peace­ful vil­lage. It is a lone­ly road and peo­ple can come in and out to do what they wish. We asked them to place a cam­era. It may not stop the is­sue but can work as a de­ter­rent and it can be used to go back and see who was in the Heights of Aripo road be­cause it’s free for all,” he added.

Di­az stressed the dan­ger that lurks on the junc­tion among res­i­dents, es­pe­cial­ly the women.

Aripo residents walk along the road when GML visited the area yesterday.

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“We had that fear for a long time. The junc­tion is a dan­ger­ous place. Too many peo­ple got robbed there and it’s a cen­tral area that some­one from out­side can wait for us. This is one way in and one way out and there are no cam­eras. I be­lieve bet­ter can be done.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who wished not to be named called for fre­quent po­lice pa­trols through­out the day and night and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a po­lice post on the junc­tion.

“They should have po­lice in­side here more than usu­al be­cause the oth­er day they found a body. I saw the po­lice there and it was a dri­ver who tell me they found the body and if I tell you some­thing. You see in this life you have to live how God want you to live, cause the kind of thing go­ing on now,” the vil­lager said.

“Up here don’t have plen­ty peo­ple to say you can form a vig­il or a com­mu­ni­ty watch and po­lice don’t pa­trol enough in this area ei­ther. They will come up, go an area and then back down. This road leads to the vil­lage. There are no street lights or any­thing we ask­ing for this to hap­pen long time now,” he added.

“But what I study­ing is who else life at stake? Who else go have to die for any­thing to be done? And it’s out­side peo­ple and we know it,” the vil­lager said.

He re­called a re­cent in­ci­dent where a red van came in­to the area and the dri­ver was en­quir­ing about a man whose car was found burnt.

Kan­dace Bharath-Na­hous, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of The Can­dle­light Move­ment, lashed out at the Gov­ern­ment in a news re­lease.

He said that one year lat­er “the bod­ies of our women con­tin­ue to be dumped in a for­est. One year lat­er and de­spite much con­ver­sa­tion, vig­ils, march­es, protests and promis­es by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go our women have not been giv­en a chance to pro­tect them­selves from the evil roam­ing the land and to­day are un­able to ob­tain per­mits for the use of pep­per spray.”

A shrine for murder and kidnapped victim Andrea Bharatt was placed on the Heights Aripo Road.

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She re­it­er­at­ed that “PH” taxis which are re­spon­si­ble for the mur­der of Ashan­ti Ri­ley and sex­u­al as­sault of count­less women “con­tin­ue to op­er­ate to­tal­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed whilst fam­i­lies must wear masks in their own ve­hi­cles be­cause po­lice will not know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a pri­vate taxi and a fam­i­ly car.”

On De­cem­ber 7, 2021, the Can­dle­light Move­ment served a Na­tion­al Pe­ti­tion with over 128,000 sig­na­tures call­ing on Par­lia­ment to do bet­ter to pro­tect women and cit­i­zens.

Bharath-Na­hous said since then the calls of con­cerned cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to fall on deaf ears.

“As heart­break­ing and trau­mat­ic as this sit­u­a­tion is for all law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and women in our coun­try, it is clear that vi­o­lence met­ed out against our women will not be im­por­tant enough to en­gage the at­ten­tion of those de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed to pro­tect our cit­i­zens,” she said.

“Again we call up­on the Par­lia­ment to give the safe­ty and pro­tec­tion of our women the pri­or­i­ty it de­serves so that in­no­cent lives will not con­tin­ue to be snuffed out,” she added.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment re­gard­ing con­cerns raised by the vil­lagers, MP Beck­les said: “The vil­lage can al­so make the re­quest and I will give my full and ab­solute sup­port.”

Anthony Martinez speak GML when they visited Aripo Road, Heights of Aripo yesterday.

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