RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porterrad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice of­fi­cers forcibly en­tered a par­ty boat op­er­a­tor’s premis­es at King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing re­fused ac­cess. Once the of­fi­cers gained en­try, de­mo­li­tion of the site be­gan as the of­fi­cers cleared the way for con­tin­ued land recla­ma­tion for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front project.

Se­nior of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Se­nior Supt Sood­een, Se­nior Supt Ce­cil San­tana, and Se­nior Supt Belfour, led the op­er­a­tion. Sood­een said they had no choice but to en­ter forcibly, not­ing that evic­tion no­tices had been is­sued to the op­er­a­tor as far back as 2018.

“We had to use force to en­ter the premis­es be­cause there was no co­op­er­a­tion from the op­er­a­tors. The struc­ture be­ing de­mol­ished has been de­lay­ing progress on the recla­ma­tion project,” he ex­plained.

Sood­een said the po­lice were called in af­ter due no­tice had been giv­en.

“Up to this morn­ing, I ad­vised the man­ag­er to present doc­u­ments for the de­mo­li­tion, but there was no com­pli­ance. The se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices pro­ceed­ed with the de­mo­li­tion. There were no in­ci­dents,” Sood­een re­it­er­at­ed.

He said the par­ty boat would be tak­en to Staubles Bay for safe­keep­ing and there would be 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty on-site un­til the project is com­plet­ed to en­sure the safe­ty of the work­ers.

“This will be a po­lice se­cu­ri­ty de­tail to en­sure every­thing runs smooth­ly,” he added.

UDe­COTT chair­man Noel Gar­cia, who was at the scene, said he has no com­ment to make ex­cept to say that it is a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue. He di­rect­ed the me­dia to ad­dress ques­tions to the po­lice. 

An of­fi­cial from the par­ty boat site said the po­lice had their work to do.

“Let the au­thor­i­ties do what they need to do,” he said. 

While the de­mo­li­tion was tak­ing place, barges con­tin­ued un­load­ing ma­te­r­i­al for the recla­ma­tion of the sea at Kings Wharf. 

In Ce­dros, fish­er­folk ex­pressed con­cern about dam­age to their nets due to the fre­quent pas­sage of ships from the Colum­bus Chan­nel.

UDe­COTT, Dutch-based dredg­ing spe­cial­ist com­pa­ny Van Oord and its sub­sidiary Dra­vo SA  are in­volved in the project which aims to re­claim 3.8 hectares of land at the King’s Wharf North Node. Be­tween 150,000 and 200,000 cu­bic me­tres of sand ma­te­r­i­al are be­ing dredged from a bor­row area off Is­lote Bay along the south­west­ern coast of Trinidad to fa­cil­i­tate the project.