Carisa Lee

Mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion are call­ing for ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress what they de­scribe as de­plorable con­di­tions at their sta­tion, claim­ing re­peat­ed com­plaints to se­nior of­fi­cers have gone unan­swered for years.

Of­fi­cers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the De Ver­teuil Street build­ing is in­fest­ed with rats, has leak­ing ceil­ings, on­ly one func­tion­ing toi­let, faulty elec­tri­cal wiring, and no work­ing se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras.

“The light flick­ers and blinks all the time. A few weeks ago a light switch was spark­ing... AC on­ly func­tions well in the Asp and In­spec­tor dorms,” one of­fi­cer said.

They al­so com­plained that the pris­on­er cell is be­ing used for stor­age, there is no light­ing on the com­pound, and there is in­ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion in the fe­male dorm, where mat­tress­es are stored in the small re­stroom. Lock­ers are shared among of­fi­cers, and the build­ing’s lo­ca­tion down a hill pre­vents them from see­ing who is ap­proach­ing.

Chair­man of the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Ray­mond Co­zi­er, said he was not aware of the sta­tion’s con­di­tion but ad­mit­ted that space re­mains a chal­lenge. Af­ter vis­it­ing the fa­cil­i­ty this morn­ing, he said he ob­served some of the is­sues raised but added that man­age­ment was sur­prised com­plaints were made, as they were not brought up at re­cent month­ly coun­cil meet­ings.

Co­zi­er said the cor­po­ra­tion would ad­dress some im­me­di­ate con­cerns while con­tin­u­ing to lob­by the Gov­ern­ment for a new sta­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, ASP Ish­mael Pitt, is ex­pect­ed to vis­it the build­ing to­day.

Guardian Me­dia al­so tried to con­tact ASP Shash Ma­haraj, but the call was dis­con­nect­ed, and fur­ther at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful. Ques­tions sent to Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro went unan­swered up to news time.