Each day I walk through the streets of Port-of-Spain I am sad­dened and sick­ened by the lack of polic­ing, law­less­ness, and filth I en­counter. Let me pro­ceed to ex­pound on these is­sues. First­ly, there is a se­ri­ous prob­lem with mo­torists com­mit­ting traf­fic of­fences. Of­fences vary from dou­ble park­ing, cars ob­struct­ing ac­cess to fire hy­drants, il­le­gal PH taxis (for which there is a pro­pos­al to le­galise), dri­vers caus­ing con­ges­tion at in­ter­sec­tions, and taxis stop­ping on cor­ners to pick up/drop off pas­sen­gers. On many streets where there is the street sign which means "No Park­ing at Any Time" there are ve­hi­cles il­le­gal­ly parked. The up­set­ting thing is that this is a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence lit­er­al­ly on the doorsteps of the Po­lice Head­quar­ters Build­ing on St Vin­cent Street. It is clear that nei­ther the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Of­fi­cers nor Traf­fic Branch Of­fi­cers are do­ing what they are paid to do. I am yet to see the ef­fect of the traf­fic war­dens that were re­cent­ly un­leashed on­to the streets of Port-of-Spain.

Sec­ond­ly, there is the is­sue of va­grants and the whole nine yards that come with their in­va­sion. There is one gen­tle­man whose leg is de­com­pos­ing and it has a pink and white ap­pear­ance much like your Christ­mas morn­ing baked ham (get the pic­ture?) I have seen sev­er­al oth­ers who have cylin­dri­cal shaped de­vices (pens, pipes etc) and I have come to un­der­stand that these are de­vices typ­i­cal­ly used by drug ad­dicts to con­sume their il­le­gal sub­stances. These hap­pen in broad day­light on ma­jor streets such as Duke and Hen­ry Streets. An­oth­er un­san­i­tary sit­u­a­tion is the prob­lem of urine and hu­man fe­ces on al­most every street cor­ner. Even if the May­or choos­es to turn a blind eye to this, I am sure that he could smell the stench of hu­man ex­cre­ment since there is a com­mu­ni­ty of street dwellers with loose bow­els op­po­site the Fred­er­ick Street en­trance to City Hall. With all due re­spect, the May­or sig­naled his in­ten­tions to deal with this par­tic­u­lar prob­lem ear­ly in­to his tenure but it has gone un­re­solved.

Third­ly, I would throw every­thing else in­to a gen­er­al cat­e­go­ry of law­less and in­con­sid­er­ate be­hav­iour that has flour­ished be­cause of the ap­a­thy and dere­lic­tion of du­ty by the pow­ers-that-be. From Il­le­gal Street vend­ing, store own­ers re­serv­ing park­ing spots with bar­rels, mug­gings, shoot­ings, in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of rub­bish, and poor build­ing plans which cre­ate park­ing dilem­mas. Agen­cies such as Town and Coun­try, EMA, City Cor­po­ra­tion, and of­fice hold­ers such as the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, May­or and the re­spec­tive line min­is­ters need to get their col­lec­tive act to­geth­er to pro­vide clean and safe sur­round­ings in Port-of-Spain for tax­pay­ers and the cit­i­zen­ry as whole.

Ray­mond Jainar­ine

Port-of-Spain