CALL ‘ANSWERED’

By Emmanuel Joseph and Ryan Gilkes

The residents of a tiny St James village scored a victory on Monday in their bid to have telecommunications company Digicel remove a contentious temporary cell owner from their midst.

Digicel Chief Executive Officer Natalie Abrahams informed Barbados TODAY the company is in the process of relocating the cell-on-wheels tower.

At the same time, Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology Marsha Caddle warned that the tower would have to go if it was found to have failed town planning requirements. But she noted that the issue has also raised questions about striking a balance in pursuing development.

The announcement comes 47 days after the tower was installed, triggering fears among residents that the radiation emitted by the structure posed a threat to their health and wellbeing.

What followed were persistent demands in the media by residents for the mast to be removed, the enlisting of a US-based advocacy group, a petition submitted to the government regulator, the Telecommunications Unit and heated exchanges between homeowners and Digicel officials.

At the heart of the controversy is the cell-on-wheels tower’s location 40 feet from the nearest residence, which the residents claim violates the stipulated 65-foot distance guideline.

A decision on Sunday to picket Government Headquarters on Bay Street to present their documented concerns was called off after Abrahams said the company was now looking for an alternative location to install the tower that would still give cell phone service to the area.

“We have communicated with the residents’ spokesperson, Dr Alleyne and indicated that our engagement with the regulator, and relevant ministries and departments continues with a view to finding an alternative solution to the immediate need of providing coverage to the area,” the Digicel CEO told Barbados TODAY.

Retired UWI academic Dr Jennifer Obidah-Alleyne who led the Olive Lodge Residents’ Committee welcomed the announcement but said she was more interested in when it would be gone.

Based on the utility’s assurance that a removal date would come soon, the resident’s spokeswoman said that the planned demonstration outside Government Headquarters has been placed on hold.

Minister Caddle also spoke to the matter this morning when she addressed the inaugural meeting of the International Institute of Communications (IIC) Caribbean Chapter.

“I come from an activist background, and I will always support the right of citizens to agitate,” said the minister. “I welcome it. On the specific matter that is now occupying public discussion with a particular piece of infrastructure that has recently been erected in St James, the utility in question here, and I say this for full transparency, the utility in question here has been made to apply for planning permission. And the Planning and Development Department and that ministry will determine if it has met the burden to receive such a permission.

“If not,” she warned, “the cell on wheel tower in question, will be removed.”

Dr Obidah-Alleyne told Barbados TODAY that they had decided to stay the action pending the conclusion of discussions with Digicel management regarding a possible solution to the issue.

As the neighbours, some in their eighties and nineties, met on Sunday, they declared their intention to fight to the “last drop of blood”, as they decided to take their battle for the mast’s removal before Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

The gathering attracted Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne and Paul Gibson, the former Democratic Labour Party candidate for St James Central as Dr Obidah-Alleyne called for full support as they entered a new phase of their fight over the tower. She had announced plans to request a police permit to march on the Prime Minister’s Office.

She was adamant that the protest would proceed if Digicel failed to state exactly when it would remove the structure from Olive Lodge.

“Our next step is to visit the prime minister…and we are going to carry placards and we are going to let her know, we want this tower gone,” the residents’ spokeswoman declared to the villagers.

“We are going to get assistance,” she said. “We are going to get a bus, and we are going to drive down there. And I want the elderly to stand up and represent us there. We are going to make sure you are comfortable.”

“But we want you to come because we want them to see they are doing harm to our neighbourhood, and we are not standing for it. Whatever we need to do, we are going to do because we are not stopping until that tower is removed.”

.The installation of a cell tower in a community where people raise livestock, plant gardens and walk for their health on mornings, had turned them into overnight activists, she declared.

“We are protecting Olive Lodge Road and roads like Olive Lodge, so that when they feel they can just step into any community and drop towers without permission and get away with it, we are here to show people like us, no, we don’t have to stand for it,” Dr Obidah-Alleyne stated with applause from the audience.

She also referred to a letter dated February 28 which she received from the government’s Telecommunications Unit in response to correspondence urging the removal of the tower.

She expressed disappointment that the regulator did not properly address their fears of health hazards and distance between homes and towers as outlined in the committee’s correspondence,

The letter from the unit, which was shared with Barbados TODAY acknowledged receipt and went on to state: “You are assured that the Telecommunications Unit in the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology is taking this matter very seriously, and has shared the correspondence with the Director of Planning and Development for his attention.”

The opposition leader applauded the Olive Lodge residents for exercising constitutional rights to organise and fight against Digicel for setting up the contentious tower that Thorne, a senior counsel, said “was not legally placed there”.

The DLP political leader advised that every construction “on the face of this island must have permission [from], they used to call it the Town Planning Department, they call it something else now, but the same people, the same business” as he urged the residents to “lodge a complaint” and “remain united”.

The point was underscored by science and technology minister Caddle as she spoke to Barbados TODAY on the sidelines of Monday’s IIC meeting.

She said: “The Planning and Development Department, as is their custom, will ask other agencies, agencies at the Telecoms Unit, Ministry of Health, etc., for their comment on the planning application.  That’s what they normally do. So any considerations that would have to go into the installation of a tower of that nature, the Planning and Development Department, which I should specify is not in my ministry, would have to be the ones to make that determination and they have the reach across government to get comments from whomever is required to comment.

Thorne suggested in Sunday’s meeting: “The least corporations should do, is hold a town hall meeting like this, invite the residents to come together and express an opinion as to the project. I don’t know that anybody in the community would have said, yes. And the fact that they have installed it without consultation, would indicate that they knew that you would not have said yes, So, you are here this evening to say ‘no,’ ” Thorne urged the residents who responded with a loud ‘no’.

For Caddle, the controversy exposes the need for a “conversation about the balance of development”.

She said: ” Digicel said in their statement that they published that at risk was the access of 2 500 people and 25 businesses to a network. So we have, of course, to be concerned with health and amenity and convenience issues and the comfort of residents. I’m sure Barbadians would also feel that we have to be concerned with connectivity.

“I know when your phone goes down, when your network goes down, you get vexed and you want to know whose fault it is and what happened. So we have to balance that conversation.”
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb