Richard Lord

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har is re­view­ing re­cent moves by Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing to im­pose re­stric­tions on bars in the cap­i­tal city. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said he was try­ing to de­ter­mine what au­thor­i­ty he had in the mat­ter. He agreed that there was need for a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the mat­ter and if need be, leg­isla­tive changes would be made in due course.

Lee Sing di­rect­ed ear­li­er this month that bars along Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook and in St James to stop sell­ing al­co­holic bev­er­ages at mid­night. That or­der was giv­en af­ter res­i­dents of those Port-of-Spain dis­tricts com­plained that they were un­able to sleep in their homes at nights. Lee Sing has been crit­i­cised by many busi­ness­men as a re­sult of his de­ci­sion. They say their busi­ness are be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed. Ra­mad­har said the is­sue of zon­ing should be looked at. He not­ed that there was zon­ing in de­vel­oped na­tions but in T&T busi­ness­es usu­al­ly are lo­cat­ed in close prox­im­i­ty to res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties.

He said cit­i­zens had a right to be able to sleep in their homes at night but the busi­ness­men al­so had a sim­i­lar right to earn a liv­ing. Ra­mad­har said there was a need for all sides to come to­geth­er im­ple­ment a fair and ac­cept­able sys­tem. Se­nior Mag­is­trate Lu­ci­na Car­de­nas-Ra­goo­nanan ap­proved more than 40 dance­hall li­cences dur­ing a spe­cial sit­ting on Thurs­day. She said the li­cences were grant­ed be­cause no ob­jec­tions were raised. She added that the com­mit­tee would on­ly im­pose con­di­tions when an ob­jec­tion may be tak­en.

The mag­is­trate in­sist­ed that she can­not im­pose an or­der for bars to close at mid­night. She added that it was on­ly the re­spec­tive min­is­ter who can au­tho­rise who can ef­fect a re­stric­tion of hours for the sale of al­co­hol. Ra­mad­har said yes­ter­day he was look­ing at the mat­ter with a view to "strik­ing a bal­ance" be­tween the res­i­dents and the busi­ness­es.