Yvonne Ba­boolal

Deputy may­or of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion Keron Valen­tine says may­or Louis Lee Sing and CEO Winifred David seem to be at log­ger­heads and it is af­fect­ing the run­ning of the cor­po­ra­tion. And he is urg­ing them to sit down and get their act to­geth­er.

Valen­tine made the state­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian on the mat­ter. He said all 12 coun­cil­lors-one UNC, three Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and eight PNM-agree things were not hap­pen­ing as fast as they should. "Coun­cil­lors are say­ing projects rec­om­mend­ed since 2010 are still not im­ple­ment­ed in their elec­toral dis­tricts," he added.

Coun­cil­lor Bal­li­ram Ram­su­chit, a mem­ber of the COP, said he did not think the cor­po­ra­tion was func­tion­ing prop­er­ly. He said the CEO was the one to re­solve the prob­lem. He added: "If the top of any or­gan­i­sa­tion is not func­tion­ing prop­er­ly you will have a chain-re­ac­tion. We are not get­ting the full co-op­er­a­tion of the CEO. Most projects are not im­ple­ment­ed and if one is, it takes very long."

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, he added: "We have been here 25 months. It took us two years to get an el­e­va­tor in the build­ing. "There are three floors and women had to be traips­ing up and down the stairs. $200,000 was set aside for the project but it was not done un­til re­cent­ly."

Lee Sing said he did not wish to com­ment, but said: "The coun­cil con­tin­ues to en­cour­age the CEO and the ad­min­is­tra­tion that it made an oath to leave Port-of-Spain in a bet­ter con­di­tion than in which it was met." David could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day as sev­er­al calls to her cell­phone went unan­swered.