PORT MARIA, St Mary — The police in this parish capital are actively searching for a new temporary base amid fresh uncertainty regarding the Government’s promised construction of a new station for them.

They are now in the faulty rented building they occupy on the town’s Main Street, said Superintendent Bobette Morgan-Simpson who heads the St Mary Police Division.

“The police in Port Maria are suffering due to the condition under which they are operating… [It] is really, really bad. Cleaning [the building] is not going to fix the situation,” she told Thursday’s monthly meeting of the St Mary Municipal Corporation

Morgan-Simpson also indicated that the matter was raised with the police commissioner, Major General Antony Anderson, during his visit to the parish last month.

“He basically told me that I should try to find another location,” the superintendent added, while urging residents to assist in finding a temporary location that is suitable.

The senior officer also appealed for stakeholders to help her “agitate for things to move a little bit faster” regarding the promised construction of the new police station, which would also house the divisional headquarters.

The proposed multi-purpose facility is based on a memorandum of understanding, which was signed between the Ministry of National Security and National Housing Trust (NHT) in 2018. In that same year, then security minister Robert Montague broke ground for the construction. Two years later, Dr Horace Chang, after becoming security minister, also broke ground for the project to commence. Since then, there have been other missed starting dates reportedly due to issues linked to the type of soil at the proposed construction site.

Morgan-Simpson, during a previous sitting of the St Mary Municipal Corporation, said she was informed that the long-awaited construction would start in June this year.

That latest timeline now seems threatened.

Morgan-Simpson told the corporation on Thursday that, during a meeting she had moments earlier with the NHT, she was informed that another round of investigation would be done to determine if the proposed seaside location is suitable for the new station.

She stated that the entities which have been called in to undertake the investigation are the National Works Agency (NWA), the St Mary Municipal Corporation, the National Environment and Planning Agency, and the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. The NWA already visited the site.

The new concern regarding the proposed location is partly based on the massive flood that hit Port Maria earlier this year.

“Due to the flooding that took place on the first of February, a number of issues were raised in terms of the suitability [of the site],” Morgan-Simpson said.

The flood ravaged the parish capital and also shifted relatively large metal containers that had been placed at the proposed location.