RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) is de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion, fol­low­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of a wa­ter pump from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP), Arou­ca, and a pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa.

In of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the POA warned that the sit­u­a­tions pose se­vere risks to prison of­fi­cers and in­mates, cre­at­ing un­safe and un­san­i­tary con­di­tions.

The POA said a vi­tal pump that had been sent for re­pairs has not been re­turned.

In a let­ter to Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe, POA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Lester Lo­gie said: “It is quite un­for­tu­nate that to date, the wa­ter pump has not been re­placed. Of­fi­cers are now re­quired to phys­i­cal­ly car­ry buck­ets of wa­ter for the dai­ly func­tion of the prison. This prac­tice is un­ac­cept­able and is af­fect­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion, as of­fi­cers have to aban­don their posts to per­form these du­ties.”

Com­pound­ing the is­sue, the fa­cil­i­ty’s fire pump is al­so out of ser­vice, leav­ing the MSP dan­ger­ous­ly un­pre­pared for an emer­gency.

The POA ref­er­enced past in­ci­dents where wa­ter short­ages led to un­rest with­in the prison, in­clud­ing the vi­o­lent mur­der of in­mate Kevin ”Man­war­ren” Wal­lace, al­so known as ‘Man­war­ren’.

At the ECRC in San­ta Rosa, a pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion has caused con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of of­fice spaces and liv­ing quar­ters, with pi­geon drop­pings cov­er­ing sur­faces and seep­ing in­to the air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem.

“A dead pi­geon was found in the air con­di­tion­ing unit of the Wel­fare De­part­ment, which has re­sult­ed in the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the air be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed through­out the build­ing,” Lo­gie said.

“This has cre­at­ed an ex­treme­ly haz­ardous sit­u­a­tion, with of­fi­cers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry is­sues, among oth­er health con­cerns.”

He warned that ac­cord­ing to med­ical ex­perts “pro­longed ex­po­sure to pi­geon drop­pings can cause res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es such as histo­plas­mo­sis and sal­mo­nel­la in­fec­tions, mak­ing the cur­rent con­di­tions in­side the ECRC a se­ri­ous oc­cu­pa­tion­al health haz­ard.”

The POA is de­mand­ing that the au­thor­i­ties take im­me­di­ate ac­tion, in­clud­ing re­moval of the pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion and sani­ti­sa­tion of af­fect­ed ar­eas, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the miss­ing wa­ter pump, and restora­tion of es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty with­in the prison sys­tem.

In let­ters sent to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Cor­raspe, the POA said the on­go­ing ne­glect of these is­sues is un­ac­cept­able.

Cor­raspe and Hinds could not be reached for com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.