An ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched by se­nior prison of­fi­cials fol­low­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of a key at the Women’s Prison in Arou­ca, rais­ing se­ri­ous se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

The miss­ing key, sources say, can open mul­ti­ple gates with­in the fa­cil­i­ty, po­ten­tial­ly com­pro­mis­ing the safe­ty of both of­fi­cers and in­mates.

Prison Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don has de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as ex­treme­ly con­cern­ing, em­pha­sis­ing the sig­nif­i­cant se­cu­ri­ty risks and fi­nan­cial bur­den that could re­sult.

“This is not some­thing that hap­pens reg­u­lar­ly but when it does, it’s a ma­jor prob­lem,” Gor­don said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“We’ve had an in­ci­dent years ago, where an of­fi­cer mis­placed a key and then lied about it, which caused a lot of com­pli­ca­tions. The re­al­i­ty is, when a key like this goes miss­ing, it could mean re­plac­ing all af­fect­ed locks, which costs mil­lions.”

Gor­don al­so high­light­ed an on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cern at the Women’s Prison, where some cell gates are re­port­ed­ly left un­locked at night, de­spite re­peat­ed ob­jec­tions from the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“For the longest while, we have been against this prac­tice, yet it con­tin­ues. Se­cu­ri­ty is our num­ber one pri­or­i­ty and sit­u­a­tions like this on­ly make our jobs more dan­ger­ous.”

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the key was dis­cov­ered miss­ing just over a week ago. How­ev­er, prison au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed­ly kept the mat­ter qui­et, leav­ing some of­fi­cers deeply con­cerned for their safe­ty.

One source ques­tioned how the key could have gone miss­ing with­out de­tec­tion.

“It’s strange be­cause the tak­ing over and hand­ing over process should have re­vealed this im­me­di­ate­ly. Every night, lock­down is done where pris­on­ers and keys are checked, and a sta­tus re­port is giv­en to the su­per­in­ten­dent, who then in­forms the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons,” the source said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the key in ques­tion is a mas­ter key and opens all gates with­in the Women’s Prison, though ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures pre­vent it from un­lock­ing cer­tain ar­eas overnight. Still, the dis­ap­pear­ance has forced of­fi­cials to con­sid­er re­plac­ing more than 25 locks, an ex­pen­sive un­der­tak­ing since prison locks are sourced from Eng­land.

Gor­don stressed that se­cu­ri­ty laps­es like this should not be tak­en light­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the con­stant risks faced by prison of­fi­cers.

“As of­fi­cers, we are al­ways un­der threat. Se­cu­ri­ty is para­mount, and any fail­ure in this sys­tem puts lives at risk. The com­mis­sion­er has stat­ed that ad­just­ments will be made to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing again, and we ex­pect ac­count­abil­i­ty at all lev­els.”

In an of­fi­cial state­ment yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice con­firmed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of the key.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the key—iden­ti­fied as a ri­ot-gate key—was re­port­ed miss­ing on Feb­ru­ary 3 dur­ing the hand­ing-over process at the fa­cil­i­ty.

It said act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe was in­formed and, in turn, im­me­di­ate­ly no­ti­fied Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds. The prison was placed on lock­down and ex­ten­sive search­es were con­duct­ed but the key has yet to be re­cov­ered.

Prison of­fi­cials have since con­sult­ed the prison lock­smith to im­ple­ment coun­ter­mea­sures and se­cure the gates to pre­vent any breach­es.

Com­mis­sion­er Cor­raspe de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as “wor­ry­ing and com­pro­mis­ing” and con­firmed that steps are be­ing tak­en to re­place the locks.

Ef­forts to reach the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Hinds for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.