(Trinidad Guardian) Gillian French said she didn’t want her son, Kevin Barker, to do work for the Housing Development Corporation (HDC). She begged him to turn down a contract he was awarded under HDC’s rehabilitation project but he told her he was not “taking needles” (being intimidated) by the gangsters who demanded he give them 20 per cent of the estimated $90,000 contract. He told anyone who would listen that he was not paying the “tax”.
“Right now, the contract on pause until police and army come to guard. For peace sake, for my sake, for the children’s sake, for family sake I tell him to give back that contract. I tell him don’t take it,” French said.
Police sources said the “tax” was a $20,000 extortion fee demanded from Barker and when he didn’t pay up, his murder was ordered from behind bars. Investigators believe the father of four was targeted because he brazenly refused to give in to repeated demands from criminals.
At around 1.10 pm on August 29, Barker was shot dead behind Building 8, Maloney Gardens. Police reported that three men in dark clothes, all wearing masks, two armed with rifles and one with a handgun, opened fire on Barker before running off. Crime scene investigators recovered 19 spent 5.56 mm shells, 24 spent 9 mm shells and three 5.56 mm rounds of ammunition at the scene.
The use of deadly force by gunmen demanding money is nothing new and Barker’s killing is not the first such incident for the year. On March 3, Aneesa Ramkissoon, 26, was killed at her Train Line Road home for refusing to pay “tax”. In the case of Ramkissoon, who just one month before her murder had given birth to her third child, the amount demanded was never disclosed but like Barker, her defiance led to her death.
French said about an hour before her son was gunned down, she was with him to the back of their apartment building looking at a primed wall that was being prepared for painting. The contract was supposed to be completed within 14 days.
She recalled: “When I hear the shots, I know was my son because where the gunshots was coming from, I know I leave him in that area. I jump up off my bed and just stand up and was talking to myself saying ‘Gillian don’t go outside, shots ringing out.’ Is when shots stop, and I hear people bawl out is when I went outside and see him lying down there.”
After the shooting, French retrieved her son’s iPhone, $7, a pack of cigarettes and his lighter from the murder scene because she did not want the police to take them away.
HDC: Killing not over contract
Speaking with Guardian Media hours after the killing, HDC managing director Jayselle Mc Farlene denied that it was linked to HDC contracts.
“No, it’s unrelated to the HDC. It is unrelated to any contracts at the HDC. Those contracts were awarded quite a while ago and no, it’s not really anything at the HDC.”
Mc Farlene said the HDC’s rehabilitation programme is being rolled out high-risk communities.
“There’s no name for the programme. We are still receiving requests for areas that we may have missed. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to execute what is considered to be of high risk, especially based on the weather and the fact that we are in the rainy season” she explained.
She said the programme could be extended beyond the 12 weeks to include other maintenance work.
According to Mc Farlene, the programme came out of an Estate Management Audit completed last year which identified $200 million in repairs that needed to be done on housing units in 19 communities. So far, HDC has spent $13 million on materials for the repairs.
“By and large we are trying to use direct labour which will be cheaper to the agency because there are no cost markups. That is one of the benefits of going to the local residents directly,” she said.
Mc Farlene said funding for the rehabilitation programme came from the Housing Ministry’s Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) 2022/2023. She said the repairs were being done “for the better living standard of our residents.”
She added: “We try to make the conditions a lot better for our residents and as much as we can and overall, it’s cheaper on the HDC if we engage residents. We also have a social responsibility. That’s why we have the internship programme, both in the office and external and in the communities.”
However, French is of the view that rather than awarding contracts to residents the HDC should use skilled and unskilled labour to complete the project.
“It have skilled workers in HDC sitting down doing nothing, let them come and if they could, hire the amateur men in the communities,” she said.
She said the presence of the police and soldier near the job sites is of no use as they are only present while the work is in progress and killers can attack at the end of the work day.
French said her son’s killers stole the joy from her four grandsons who range in age from eight years and 19 months. They have been asking for their father every day since the killing.
This was the second HDC contract awarded to her son. The first was during the Carnival season when Barker was also was approached to pay “tax” but did not.
“He was loving and kind. When he came home from working in the Corporation (Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation) he would clean up the area. Ask anybody in the community, all the old people, he was always helping them,” she said.