Open letter to Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner:
Please don't bring back the wrecker. You know how much pressure the previous government put the people under. So far the PP is about trying to find solutions without adding stress to the average citizen. The wrecker is a PNM solution to the parking problem. Pretty much a cop-out and not your style. I have always admired the way you tackle problems, from the ground up, never putting a plaster on a sore.
You are one of the most travelled ministers and must have seen some of the innovative ways the First World deals with this problem:
Cops on the beat giving tickets.
Installing parking meters with "meter maids" patrolling.
Locking vehicle wheels-with a cell number to call to get your car unlocked.
Linking parking tickets to driver's permit renewal and vehicle insurance premium.
There are many more methods that don't damage someone's property. Wrecking should be a last resort.
Why go back to this barbarism. You were once an ordinary citizen and have heard some of the horror stories of indiscriminate wrecking at the hands of a three-month-old police recruit flexing his new "muscles," sometimes with people still in the car. Don't jump for what seems like the easiest fix. Let's implement any of these in a phased, civilised way and I'm sure you will get the corporation of thousands or motorists, especially those who have voted against this sort of puerile, punishment-style, colonial PNM method created to subdue the masses and teach them a "lesson" for having a car and daring to park it in "their" capital.
Robert Johnson
Maraval