KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the Min­istry of De­fence is con­sid­er­ing the Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre (PEC) as one of the venues to house de­por­tees from the Unit­ed States, the fa­cil­i­ty is cur­rent­ly used to care for vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren. 

And res­i­dents in the area are alarmed and al­so fear­ful that their ar­rival could spell trou­ble for the com­mu­ni­ty.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Tues­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said to man­age an “avalanche” of de­por­tees, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tive hous­ing op­tions, in­clud­ing the Pi­paro Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre (PEC). The fa­cil­i­ty, which was seized by the State, was once owned by de­ceased drug king­pin Nankissoon “Dole Chadee” Boodram. 

 Since Oc­to­ber 2024, the fa­cil­i­ty, re­named the Na­tion­al Care and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre (NCEC), has op­er­at­ed un­der the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty as a mod­el re­cep­tion cen­tre. Ac­cord­ing to the Au­thor­i­ty, the NCEC aims to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al bench­mark in child­care ser­vices and pro­vide a safe, nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ment, com­plete with mod­ern ameni­ties and cus­tomised pro­gram­ming to meet the holis­tic needs of chil­dren in tem­po­rary care.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, lo­cat­ed deep with­in the forest­ed rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, it was ful­ly op­er­a­tional. 

 Res­i­dents of the once-no­to­ri­ous vil­lage have mixed feel­ings about Sturge’s sug­ges­tion. One of them is Boodram’s nephew, Ezekiel Jadoo­nanan. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at a near­by par­lour, Jadoo­nanan said the min­istry should have at least con­tact­ed the vil­lage coun­cil be­fore con­sid­er­ing re­lo­cat­ing de­por­tees with crim­i­nal records in­to the area. 

 “In case they bring back the de­por­tees, you do not know if they can run away. They have run away. Some of them might get fed up. They might want to see their fam­i­lies, or what­ev­er,” Jadoo­nanan said. 

Still, he be­lieved that as long as the de­por­tees re­main con­fined to the fa­cil­i­ty, there should be no risk. He re­called a past in­ci­dent when the fa­cil­i­ty was used as a drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre, one in­di­vid­ual es­caped to his rel­a­tive’s home and shaved his head. 

At her home, Ver­na Ma­habir echoed sim­i­lar con­cerns, say­ing she would be com­fort­able with the arrange­ment on­ly if the de­por­tees were prop­er­ly se­cured and kept away from the chil­dren. 

“Every­one would not feel safe with crim­i­nals out, so they must be se­cured. Would they be walk­ing about the vil­lage? No? Well then, we should not be wor­ried,” Ma­habir said. 

Kishore Ba­nan, a for­mer se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the one-time drug re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre, al­so raised con­cerns about the safe­ty of the chil­dren as it lacked ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty. 

 “As they said, the re­hab peo­ple used to be in and out, walk­ing around the place. If they are nor­mal de­por­tees, like reg­u­lar peo­ple who went there and stayed over their time to build a life, noth­ing is wrong with them com­ing. If you say the first one will be a sex­u­al of­fend­er, the thing is that there are a lot of lit­tle chil­dren in this area, in the road, by them­selves,” Ba­nan said. 

He said hous­ing de­por­tees with crim­i­nal records near vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren would not be wise, and that the min­istry should in­stead use a se­cure fa­cil­i­ty with armed per­son­nel. 

 Along Din­di­al Road, res­i­dent Mal­colm Joseph said it is the State’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act, but stressed that the char­ac­ter of the de­por­tees must be tak­en in­to ac­count. He op­posed plac­ing con­vict­ed mur­der­ers and sex of­fend­ers in Pi­paro, cit­ing the coun­try’s al­ready high crime rate and warn­ing that they could wors­en the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, he had no ob­jec­tion to oth­ers. 

 “Put them some­where else, but you must have peo­ple to pro­tect them,” Joseph said. 

 An­oth­er res­i­dent, Melin­da Mo­hammed, said her main con­cern was whether the com­mu­ni­ty would re­main safe. She added that vil­lagers would have no knowl­edge of the de­por­tees’ past ac­tiv­i­ties abroad. 

“We are ac­cus­tomed to our qui­et place in the vil­lage. We do not want them walk­ing about, dis­turb­ing the neigh­bours,” Mo­hammed said. 

Sev­er­al oth­er res­i­dents al­so said they had not heard that the Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing us­ing the cen­tre to ac­com­mo­date de­por­tees.