Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors have sent out ku­dos to mem­bers of the pub­lic who pro­vid­ed them with crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion which led to the re­cov­ery of a mo­bile health clin­ic that was stolen from the com­pound of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The Mit­subishi Mo­bile Screen­ing Clin­ic, li­censed TCB 141, was re­cov­ered nine hours af­ter it was stolen at a dead end street at Gopaul Park, off St Lu­cien Road in Diego Mar­tin.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 5.15 am some­one pos­ing as a dri­ver pre­sent­ed what ap­peared to be a North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card to the se­cu­ri­ty guard on du­ty.

The key was sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over and the man drove off the com­pound with the truck which, for­tu­nate­ly, was not loaded with thou­sands of dol­lars worth of med­ical equip­ment be­cause it was not due to be used yes­ter­day. The unit is used for HIV test­ing and screen­ing.

The T&T Guardian was told by res­i­dents in the area that they no­ticed the truck parked on the street from about 8 am.

“We thought the clin­ic move in­to the area to give us check-ups but then we ain’t see noth­ing again hap­pen­ing and we be­gan to have sus­pi­cions. Is on­ly when we heard about it be­ing stolen we re­alised that that is it, so we called in the po­lice,” one res­i­dent said, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, said.

Po­lice said with the as­sis­tance of res­i­dents along with in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing they were able to make a quick break­through. Po­lice al­so con­firmed that all the med­ical equip­ment in the ve­hi­cle was in­tact.

Of­fi­cers said last evening that an ar­rest is im­mi­nent.

Sgt Christo­pher Swamber of the Stolen Ve­hi­cles Squad is lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Con­tact­ed last evening, NWRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Wendy Ali said whilst the in­ci­dent was not deemed a se­cu­ri­ty is­sue per see, it had put them some­what on the alert.

“This was fraud where some­one pur­port­ed to be some­one else, so it’s fraud, so it’s not a mat­ter of whether or not we have to beef up se­cu­ri­ty at this point,” Ali said.

She added that the NWRHA was yet to re­ceive the po­lice re­port of­fi­cial­ly and un­til then would not know their next move.

Ali al­so com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers for quick ac­tions.

“I want to thank the of­fi­cers for their ac­tive pur­suit of the mat­ter. As soon as they got the re­port they start­ed act­ing...do­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and I just want to thank them.”