Kevon Felmine

Af­ter nu­mer­ous at­tempts to de­fend the re­cent­ly-im­ple­ment­ed traf­fic plan in the city of Port-of-Spain, May­or Louis Lee Sing has now de­cid­ed to keep a "still tongue" on the is­sue. This comes a day af­ter his col­league in the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, joined with res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers in an ef­fort to have the traf­fic plan re­vert­ed to its orig­i­nal for­mat.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view yes­ter­day morn­ing, Lee Sing once again at­tempt­ed to jus­ti­fy the traf­fic plan which was de­vised by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture in con­sul­ta­tion with the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. The may­or ques­tioned the rea­son why pro­test­ers said the traf­fic plan was not work­ing for busi­ness own­ers, es­pe­cial­ly when peo­ple con­tin­ue to fre­quent the roads and con­tin­ue to park on boths side of the streets, es­pe­cial­ly the West­ern Main Road in St James.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Lee Sing, in a very calm man­ner said: "I have noth­ing more to say on this mat­ter." Asked why Mc­Don­ald and pro­test­ers be­lieved that the plan was caus­ing prob­lems, he said: "I don't know and they re­al­ly don't ex­pect me to re­spond to that non­sense...I have no more com­ments to make on that mat­ter."

He said that if for­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Mc­Don­ald, who held the role of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter for sev­en years, be­lieved it should be so, then so be it. "I am go­ing to al­low all these peo­ple to wob­ble in their ig­no­rance," Lee Sing said. On Sat­ur­day, Mc­Don­ald led a protest group who walked from Long Cir­cu­lar Road to George Cabral Street, St James, to high­light their views that the traf­fic changes in Wood­brook, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, West­ern Main Road and Tra­garete Road were af­fect­ing them ad­verse­ly and they want­ed to have the traf­fic plan re­vert­ed.

Mc­Don­ald said that res­i­dent had com­plained that the change had trans­formed their roads in­to high­ways while busi­ness own­ers had re­port­ed a dras­tic de­clined in sales. She said: "The res­i­dents can tell you that these two high­ways in the mid­dle of the res­i­den­tial ar­eas have cre­at­ed hav­oc for them in terms of cross­ing, in terms of the se­nior cit­i­zens, in terms of the chil­dren." She added they would have to in­ten­si­fy their ac­tions as the new school term was near­ing.