Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers hired to trans­port ma­te­ri­als used to con­struct vend­ing booths around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, are threat­en­ing to shut down work at the site un­less se­cu­ri­ty is as­signed to their area.

It means that the dead­line to have the booths con­struct­ed and com­plet­ed by Feb­ru­ary 10 could be in jeop­ardy. Car­ni­val will be held on Feb­ru­ary 12 and 13.

The threats came days af­ter a 26-year-old loader was gunned down near the Pad­dock af­ter com­plet­ing work on a booth.

Po­lice said Akeil Archer was in the tray of a Maz­da T3500 truck on Sun­day af­ter­noon that was about to leave a paved part of the Sa­van­nah, when a white four-door pick­up truck drove in­to the path of the ve­hi­cle, block­ing it.

Gun­men got out of the car as Archer ran out of the tray on­to a grassy part of the Sa­van­nah. He was chased by his at­tack­ers, who shot him sev­er­al times, killing him.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day. The en­trance to the paved area where Archer was work­ing was blocked us­ing a chain.

Few labour­ers were seen work­ing on booths at the time.

Point­ing to a stack of wood and ma­te­r­i­al on the grass near­by, the work­er said sev­er­al oth­er labour­ers hired to trans­port the ma­te­ri­als had flat­ly re­fused to come near the Sa­van­nah un­less their safe­ty could be guar­an­teed.

“It have dri­vers out there who say they not do­ing it and I can’t get vex with them for it,” the work­er said.

“When that piece of mad­ness hap­pened on Sun­day, I went home one time. I didn’t even come out yes­ter­day (Mon­day), it was on­ly to­day I de­cid­ed to come back out and see what I could do.

“I don’t see what so hard about putting a few po­lice of­fi­cers over at that en­trance low­er down or at this one right here. If some­one wants to dri­ve on­to the Sa­van­nah, ask them what their busi­ness is and if they can’t an­swer send them off,” the work­er added, con­firm­ing the dead­line for com­ple­tion of the vend­ing booths was Feb­ru­ary 10.

Guardian Me­dia sent an email to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) on Mon­day seek­ing a re­sponse to the con­cerns and whether any se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures would be in­tro­duced. A re­minder of the ques­tions was again sent yes­ter­day but no re­sponse was giv­en up to late evening.

Guardian Me­dia al­so at­tempt­ed to con­tact NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters yes­ter­day but was un­suc­cess­ful.

While at the Sa­van­nah, work­ers with the NCC were seen in the area.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with one work­er seek­ing guid­ance on how to get a re­sponse to the ques­tions but was told the pub­lic re­la­tions per­son was not avail­able and would on­ly be avail­able from to­day.

An­oth­er worke,r when asked the same ques­tion, sug­gest­ed that we vis­it the NCC’s of­fice in per­son.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion I are in­ves­ti­gat­ing Archer’s mur­der.