Wreck­ing in Wood­brook and sur­round­ing ar­eas will be in­creased with the Car­ni­val sea­son near­ing its cli­max as the city's may­or seeks to clamp down on il­le­gal park­ing.

May­or Louis Lee Sing said so yes­ter­day at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, say­ing per­sons who park in front of res­i­dents' gate­ways would be shown no mer­cy.

So chal­leng­ing was the is­sue, Lee Sing said, many peo­ple of­ten re­mained trapped in their homes by strange cars parked in front of their gate­ways all night and in­to the morn­ing.

The is­sue was raised by coun­cil­lor for Wood­brook Cleve­land Gar­cia, who re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al tow­ing for two ma­jor shows–Machel Mon­day and Iw­er Wednes­day–billed to take place next week at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, re­spec­tive­ly.

Lee Sing said night-wreck­ing around those ar­eas would nor­mal­ly take place on Thurs­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, when there was no par­tic­u­lar cut-off time.

"It be­gins around 8 pm and con­tin­ues when nec­es­sary. This is large­ly in Wood­brook and St James where we have al­ways had those prob­lems," he added.

Lee Sing re­called a re­cent in­ci­dent in which a friend of his was un­able to leave his home be­cause his dri­ve­way on O'Con­nor Street, Wood­brook, was blocked by a car.

"He called me at 11 am and I said, 'Boy, what you want me to do?' so we are at­tempt­ing to fix all of that this year to en­sure res­i­dents are not caught locked in their homes," he said.

The may­or al­so re­spond­ed to crit­i­cisms by Diego Mar­tin North East MP Colm Im­bert about the wreck­ing of cars at mid­night and 1 am in the Wood­brook area.

Speak­ing dur­ing de­bate on the Fi­nance Bill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day, Im­bert said: "Peo­ple gone down on Ari­api­ta Av­enue to have a lit­tle drink and they turn around twice and their car gone. One o'clock in the morn­ing, Mr Speak­er. What traf­fic jam would you have at one o'clock in the morn­ing?"

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Lee Sing said no one was above the law."The law doesn't stop at any par­tic­u­lar time for any­one. If I get a tick­et I would sim­ply pay it," he said.