Gail Alexan­der

From Sep­tem­ber, Port-of-Spain work­ers will have to park their ve­hi­cles out­side the city and take a PTSC shut­tle in­to the cap­i­tal, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day.Warn­er dis­closed the plan as he spoke at a meet­ing with Laven­tille taxi dri­vers at the con­stituen­cy of­fice of Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Port-of-Spain South MP, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald.In Oc­to­ber 2010, Warn­er had spo­ken of the ini­tia­tive. He said then it would be es­tab­lished in three to six months to re­duce the con­ges­tion in the na­tion's cities and towns. He al­so said then his ini­tia­tives had found favour with the may­ors of Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.Yes­ter­day, Warn­er and Mc­Don­ald com­bined ef­forts to head off a planned protest by the dri­vers as Warn­er re­solved road prob­lems which they had brought to Mc­Don­ald. The MP had called on Warn­er for as­sis­tance.

On the new park­ing plan for the city, Warn­er said that "com­ing very, very soon," peo­ple would have to park out­side of the cap­i­tal and take a PTSC shut­tle in­to var­i­ous parts of the city.He said that would re­lieve the park­ing con­ges­tion- lead­ing to grid­locks-cur­rent­ly in play.Warn­er said park­ing of ve­hi­cles would be done at a par­tic­u­lar venue-be­ing fi­nalised-on the im­me­di­ate out­skirts. He said the plan would be in force from the start of the new fis­cal year.On the Laven­tille prob­lem, dri­vers had blocked off parts of the Laven­tille Road on Mon­day, protest­ing the de­plorable con­di­tion. Dri­vers had planned to con­tin­ue block­ing off ar­eas with their ve­hi­cles this week.

A mem­ber of the dri­vers' as­so­ci­a­tion Nigel Cox, said af­fect­ed ar­eas in­clude from Pic­cadil­ly Street-the main artery in­to Laven­tille-Bel­grade, Fro­manger and oth­er streets.Derek Lash­ley al­so said: "Patch­ing main­te­nance isn't work­ing any­more, they're been patched too of­ten. Roads need prop­er com­plete resur­fac­ing. We al­so have a prob­lem with burst Wasa mains. Cur­rent­ly we have one main on Quar­ry Street which has been spew­ing thou­sands of gal­lons of wa­ter."Dri­vers said that de­spite peace­ful con­di­tions and as­sis­tance from dri­vers, Wasa work­ers have said it is a "high risk" dis­trict to come to work in.Warn­er, con­sult­ing with High­ways Di­vi­sion chief Roger Ganesh-who ac­com­pa­nied him to the meet­ing-told the dri­vers:

"Done-work on the roads will be­gin to­mor­row (to­day)."He gave the es­ti­mat­ed cost of the job for the ini­tial phase as $1.7 mil­lion, which would resur­face the main artery from Pic­cadil­ly Streets in­to Laven­tille.

Oth­er streets, in­clud­ing Fro­manger Street and Bel­grade Street, will be done sub­se­quent­ly.Warn­er whipped out his cell­phone and called Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George who gave as­sur­ances to vis­it MP Mc­Don­ald and the area next week to deal with the Wasa main as­pect.Warn­er al­so said PH leg­is­la­tion which was ex­pect­ed to have been passed by last week, would be brought to Par­lia­ment first on the agen­da when the Sec­ond Par­lia­ment ses­sion re­sumes in Sep­tem­ber.His state­ments were loud­ly ap­plaud­ed by dri­vers."We're 110 per cent sat­is­fied...He is an ac­tion man, he don't 'stick,'" said dri­vers.PNM's Mc­Don­ald said she had con­fi­dence in Warn­er who was the on­ly per­son she trust­ed.

"He is a man of his word," she added.Warn­er said: "I've al­ways said Ms Mc­Don­ald is the best MP on the PNM side, I tell her that every time I see her in Par­lia­ment-when she calls I come run­ning."Dri­vers, in­clud­ing Jer­ry Alphon­so, took the elec­tron­ic me­dia to see the af­fect­ed roads. Alphon­so said the PNM had not done enough for the area and if the tide was turn­ing to Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's Warn­er, then, "...That is how it is be­cause you can't be vot­ing PNM all the time in a PNM strong­hold and so many things still need fix­ing all the time, too."Laven­tille res­i­dent Louis Allen ac­cused Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing of putting all ef­forts in­to Wood­brook and not East Port-of-Spain.Mil­ton Alexan­der al­so said the area on­ly re­ceived a twice-week­ly-in­ad­e­quate- garbage ser­vice.