Yvonne Ba­boolal

Par­ty-go­ers and drinkers in San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma and Ch­agua­nas are now go­ing to find them­selves be­ing mon­i­tored by the law, as may­ors in these ju­ris­dic­tions are seek­ing to clamp down on the vi­o­lence, law­less­ness and ex­ces­sive noise that takes place out­side pubs and bars at night. The may­ors' moves fol­low that of no-non­sense Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing who, re­spond­ing to com­plaints from res­i­dents of St James and Wood­brook, has sought to re­duce the open­ing hours of bars. Lee Sing is al­so seek­ing to pre­vent new bar li­cences from be­ing grant­ed in the Wood­brook area. While the may­ors of San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma and Ch­agua­nas ad­mit that they have a sim­i­lar prob­lem in pock­ets of ar­eas in their bor­oughs, they were not sure they would go the way of Lee Sing. Ques­tion­ing the le­gal­i­ty of seek­ing to re­duce the open­ing hours of bars, they promised in­stead to seek the help of the po­lice to en­force ex­ist­ing traf­fic and en­vi­ron­ment laws. San Fer­nan­do may­or Mar­lene Coudray said the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived com­plaints from res­i­dents about two par­tic­u­lar bars in the bor­ough.

She said: "We don't have a con­cen­tra­tion of pubs and bars in one area, like Ari­api­ta Av­enue. "We have pock­ets in cer­tain ar­eas and res­i­dents com­plained about the con­duct of pa­trons, the noise lev­el and law­less park­ing." How­ev­er, Coudray was doubt­ful about seek­ing to re­duce the bars' open­ing hours. She said: "If they have a li­cence, we can't try to re­duce the open­ing hours. I don't think this is even a mat­ter for the po­lice." "How­ev­er," she added, "we can draw the res­i­dents' com­plaints to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties. We can ask for po­lice pa­trols to mon­i­tor the park­ing and use the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) Act to deal with the noise." Coudray said the cor­po­ra­tion would use those mea­sures un­til there was a cri­sis. In Ari­ma, there was vi­o­lence out­side bars in the down­town area, May­or Ghas­san Youseph said yes­ter­day.He added: "There were a few mur­ders on Far­fan Street and Broad­way. "We al­so get com­plaints about the noise lev­el of the mu­sic and law­less park­ing." He said he has not tried to seek to have the bars' open­ing hours re­duced. "I don't know if that is law­ful at all but I will make my­self present in court to see if I can get the law to re­duce their hours and not grant new li­cences," Youseph promised.

Like Coudray, he said he would get the po­lice to mon­i­tor any break­ing of traf­fic and en­vi­ron­men­tal laws. Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar said he had not de­cid­ed whether he want­ed to try and get the open­ing hours of a grow­ing num­ber of "busi­ness hous­es" in the bor­ough re­duced. He said he had re­ceived nu­mer­ous com­plaints about park­ing prob­lems. "These busi­ness­es do not have park­ing and pa­trons park on the side of the road, in front of peo­ple's dri­ve­ways and on the side­walk," he said. Warn­ing that the bor­ough's po­lice of­fi­cers have in­creased from ten to 25, Na­gas­sar said the park­ing prob­lem would be ad­dressed. He said: "We will have joint po­lice/army pa­trols from Mon­day. Al­so, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er gave us a wreck­er and we have a doc­tor in the bor­ough with the equip­ment to mon­i­tor noise lev­els. "If peo­ple don't ad­here, we will have to go the way of the Port-of-Spain may­or," Nages­sar said.