The Feb­ru­ary 24 ac­ci­dent that claimed the lives of three peo­ple and in­jured oth­ers, will con­tin­ue to haunt this coun­try for some time to come.The tragedy has been in­ad­ver­tent­ly am­pli­fied by the ac­tions of of­fi­cials since then, not the least be­ing the pro­ce­dur­al mis­steps that led to the loss of crit­i­cal ev­i­dence.

Of­fi­cials vis­it­ing the site un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the out­rage of Sea Lots res­i­dents and the on­go­ing pub­lic sym­pa­thy the ac­ci­dent sparked. It wasn't un­til the Gov­ern­ment, in the per­son of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er and Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Em­manuel George, took a very hands on role in the dis­cus­sions that emo­tions set­tled in­to more use­ful pur­pose.

At the fore­front of re­cent dis­cus­sions is the con­struc­tion of a pedes­tri­an cross­ing bridge, pro­posed by Sea Lots res­i­dent Ken­roy Dop­well, a pro­pos­al that Mr Warn­er de­scribed as a "bril­liant so­lu­tion."Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George has en­cour­aged res­i­dents of the area to use the ex­ist­ing pedes­tri­an cross­ing near Pi­o­neer Dri­ve, now en­hanced with but­ton to stop traf­fic for peo­ple wish­ing to cross.

"It can­not get sick like a traf­fic war­den can," Mr George ad­vised.Oth­er use­ful sug­ges­tions have been put for­ward, in­clud­ing the con­struc­tion of crash bar­ri­ers along the side­walk and more ef­forts at man­ag­ing cross­ing in the area dur­ing high traf­fic times. Some pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis of pedes­tri­an traf­fic pat­terns has been done on the area.But Sea Lots re­mains an area of Port-of-Spain that has been over­looked for far too long.

An or­gan­ic de­vel­op­ment of low in­come hous­ing that evolved on the wa­ter­front at South Quay, the area is no­tably un­planned.Be­tween 2007 and 2010, the PNM gov­ern­ment dis­cussed the de­vel­op­ment of the area with a fo­cus on an ex­pan­sion of the port fa­cil­i­ties. For­mer ju­nior works min­is­ter Nile­ung Hy­po­lite re­ports that those talks nev­er got the point of dis­cussing re­lo­ca­tion.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie would on­ly ac­knowl­edge that project plans for Sea Lots ex­ist, de­vel­oped by the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.There's no ques­tion that the trag­ic deaths at Sea Lots have urged long over­due ac­tion on the dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion with road cross­ing along that high­way stretch and a so­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion should be sought with some ur­gency.

Two cit­i­zens, He­len Bhag­wans­ingh of Bhag­wans­ingh's Hard­ware and A Nor­man Sab­ga of the ANSA McAl Group, have stepped for­ward in a pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty to com­mit to the un­der­writ­ing of ma­te­r­i­al and labour for the build­ing of a walk­way to serve the res­i­dents.

The chal­lenge that the Gov­ern­ment faces is to cre­ate a cross­ing so­lu­tion that ca­pa­bly meets the needs of the res­i­dents. Far too many cost­ly walkovers in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been placed by en­gi­neers while pedes­tri­ans cut their own de­sired paths across the road where it makes sense to them.

The three tiers of ac­tion that the Gov­ern­ment faces on Sea Lots must be­gin with an on­go­ing traf­fic man­age­ment pres­ence that makes cross­ing the high­way there safer. Dur­ing this time, the con­sid­ered place­ment of a walk­way to ser­vice that com­mu­ni­ty should be re­searched and be­gun. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the fu­ture of Sea Lots must be ad­dressed in the best in­ter­ests of the res­i­dents and the de­vel­op­ment of Port-of-Spain.