The T&T Cham­ber wel­comes the hands-on ap­proach the May­or of Port-of-Spain, Louis Lee Sing has demon­strat­ed since tak­ing up of­fice. In the re­cent con­duct of a field vis­it to "wa­ter­ing holes" in Wood­brook, the may­or lead a team of of­fi­cers from the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA), to wit­ness, first­hand, breach­es of the laws against noise pol­lu­tion, poor san­i­ta­tion, un­safe en­vi­ron­ments, abuse and mis­use of pub­lic thor­ough­fares. This is not the first oc­ca­sion on which the cham­ber has sup­port­ed the may­or. We pub­licly did so with re­spect to his cam­paign to deal with the is­sue of va­grancy last year. We did so, too, when his pre­de­ces­sor, Murchi­son Brown, tack­led the same is­sue in 2008. The cham­ber may not al­ways be in agree­ment with all ini­tia­tives pro­posed, nor the meth­ods used, but we wel­come any rea­son­able at­tempts by our na­tion­al lead­ers to se­ri­ous­ly tack­le the peren­ni­al prob­lems af­fect­ing our cap­i­tal city, such as park­ing, pub­lic vend­ing and il­le­gal dump­ing of garbage. We have al­ways spo­ken on the im­por­tance of en­forc­ing all of our laws. As the lead­ing busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion, the cham­ber en­cour­ages all mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to be cog­nisant of their oblig­a­tion to be ex­em­plary cit­i­zens. We pub­licly recog­nise those who share our philoso­phies of do­ing what is right, as well as the su­prema­cy of the rule of law, and its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Prop­er city de­vel­op­ment

Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, in­vi­ta­tions were is­sued to var­i­ous per­sons in au­thor­i­ty, such as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mag­is­tra­cy, the li­cens­ing com­mit­tee for the dis­trict of Wood­brook, and the T&T Fire Ser­vices, who all play a role in the li­cens­ing process. It is in­deed re­gret­table that none were able to ac­com­pa­ny the may­or on his tour, as it would have af­ford­ed them a com­pre­hen­sive view of the re­al­i­ties which ex­ist in the es­tab­lish­ments which they li­cense. For in­stance, the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee, which grants or an­nu­al­ly re­views liquor li­cences, in our view, would have been able to wit­ness the phys­i­cal state and con­di­tion of premis­es they li­cence, and ob­serve any breach­es of the terms and con­di­tions there­of. An­oth­er re­gret­table ab­sence was that of any of­fi­cer of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, which al­so must play a role in the prop­er de­vel­op­ment of the cap­i­tal city. It is com­mon knowl­edge that any type of build­ing or sub-di­vi­sion plans take months to be ap­proved, and the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and its clients have no al­ter­na­tive, but to find in­no­v­a­tive means to beat the sys­tem and the bu­reau­cra­cy, a vi­cious cy­cle which gives rise to flood­ing, land sub­si­dence, sub-stan­dard con­struc­tion and com­ple­tion.

We anx­ious­ly await the Gov­ern­ment's ac­tion to ad­dress this. The pres­ence of a se­nior fire of­fi­cial would al­so have com­ple­ment­ed the may­oral team since the Fire Ser­vice is em­pow­ered by law to seek from the court, or­ders for the clo­sure of pub­lic places and what­ev­er oth­er ac­tion is nec­es­sary in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty. The Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion it­self re­lies on the ex­per­tise and skill of the Fire Ser­vices as a fac­tor the en­tire ap­proval process.

Chang­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion

The cham­ber trusts that act­ing In­spec­tor Stephanie Bil­ly and Su­per­in­ten­dent Carl­ton Pe­dro, mem­bers of the may­oral team, have tak­en note of the pub­lic per­cep­tion of that the po­lice do not "pro­tect and serve with pride." They must ac­tive­ly en­gage in trans­form­ing that per­cep­tion. There are of­ten re­port­ed com­plaints by res­i­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Wood­brook area, of un­law­ful acts be­ing com­mit­ted on or around their prop­er­ties by pa­trons who fre­quent the near­by es­tab­lish­ments, such as il­le­gal park­ing, uri­nat­ing on their walls, dis­tur­bance of the peace go­ing in­to the wee hours of the morn­ing, and lit­ter. Whether a ze­ro tol­er­ance ap­proach or the 21st cen­tu­ry polic­ing ini­tia­tive is the an­swer to this law­less­ness, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should con­sid­er mak­ing this pub­lic dis­con­tent a bench­mark when they con­duct per­for­mance ap­praisals. The plan by Tourism Min­is­ter Ru­pert Grif­fith to make Ari­api­ta Av­enue a must-see tourist at­trac­tion at a cost of some $13 mil­lion is laud­able. How­ev­er, we hope that this plan will be in con­sul­ta­tion with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers-in­clud­ing the may­or-to ful­ly un­der­stand the cur­rent is­sues and pro­cure all the re­sources need­ed to so ad­dress, be­fore any mon­ey is spent on this project.

As for Lee Sing, if he is to suc­cess­ful­ly sur­mount his de­trac­tors and leave a pos­i­tive lega­cy, he has work to do at City Hall, too. Many of the leas­es is­sued by the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion are in breach by the lessees, as a re­sult of which they may be law­ful­ly for­feit­ed by it. Sure­ly, the li­cences grat­ed and re­newed by the Li­cens­ing Com­mit­tee may be re­voked or not re­newed for breach there­of. His Wor­ship and the cor­po­ra­tion have a piv­otal role to al­so play in the process. It may first take the for­fei­ture of one lease, the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of a few law­break­ers and re­vo­ca­tion or de­nials of a few li­cences, for the mes­sage of sus­tained en­force­ment to be dri­ven home. The cham­ber stands with him on the side of en­force­ment of the laws of T&T.

T&T CHAM­BER OF IN­DUS­TRY & COM­MERCE