Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Work on the North Stand at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain is set to re­sume to­day, af­ter the con­trac­tor for the project re­placed the miss­ing steel that forced a work stop­page on Mon­day.

How­ev­er, there is still no con­fir­ma­tion on the val­ue of the steel beams that were stolen from the project, a sit­u­a­tion which Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on Mon­day.

The re­place­ment steel beams were re­ceived be­tween Mon­day and yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia was told.

There were still no work­ers on­site when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, said, “Work has halt­ed due to the miss­ing of a few pieces of steel, so they could not car­ry on to­day (yes­ter­day). How­ev­er, I have been in­formed that the steel is be­ing re­placed, so the work will con­tin­ue.”

Pe­ters said he was still un­sure about the num­ber of steel beams miss­ing for the North Stand.

“I should get that in­for­ma­tion soon but it was a few es­sen­tial pieces that are miss­ing. I don’t think that those com­po­nents went miss­ing from in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, I be­lieve that those com­po­nents went miss­ing where the North Stand was be­ing stored and it was on­ly dis­cov­ered when the North Stand was be­ing erect­ed for the Car­ni­val sea­son, be­cause we have not used the not stand for four to five, six years”, he said.

The miss­ing beams made it im­pos­si­ble for the work­ers at the site to mount up cru­cial sec­tions of the North Stand.

Ad­mit­ting that there will be some de­lay to the com­ple­tion of the stand and added costs as a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion, Pe­ters said he is now al­so look­ing at new meth­ods to store as­sets like the North Stand so there will not be a re­peat.

Mean­while, Pe­ters al­so said he was un­aware of al­le­ga­tions of ex­tor­tion by gang mem­bers against the con­trac­tor at the site.

The al­le­ga­tions were made by Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion head, Act­ing Sr Supt, Roger Alexan­der, via the TTPS pro­gramme Be­yond the Tape on Mon­day evening.

Pe­ters not­ed, “He (Alexan­der) is in charge of the se­cu­ri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, so I would guess that he would know more than I would know and privy to things that I would not know.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was al­so re­li­ably in­formed that one work­er was de­tained by po­lice at the work­site, af­ter it was al­leged the work­er com­plained about wages and work­ing con­di­tions, a claim the work­ers have been mak­ing at the site.

The work­er was said to be de­tained fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent and re­mained at West­ern Po­lice Sta­tion in Diego Mar­tin up to last evening.

Of­fi­cials from Sheron Sam­path Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed, the con­trac­tor at the site, are yet to give any state­ments or press charges against the work­er.

Ef­forts to con­tact Act­ing Sr Supt Alexan­der for a com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.