RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

The Gee­lal's Su­per Whole­saler and Dis­trib­u­tor com­pa­ny is not ac­cept­ing blame for the traf­fic woes on El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan. Al­most a week af­ter pub­lished me­dia re­ports about in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing and traf­fic con­ges­tion out­side of the busi­ness place, a spokesman for the es­tab­lish­ment said yes­ter­day, "Gee­lal is not re­spon­si­ble for that (traf­fic)." The man, in a tele­phone ex­change, re­fused to give his name or his as­so­ci­a­tion with the busi­ness when T&T Guardian con­tact­ed the store. He said those who were com­plain­ing were "il­lit­er­ate" and that taxi-dri­vers were the ones caus­ing the pile-up. The man said the busi­ness pro­vid­ed a car park for its cus­tomers.

He said: "Mr Gee­lal does not dri­ve (taxi) or is a dri­ver (taxi) and he can­not be re­spon­si­ble for some­one dri­ving a car when he is not here. "If they don't want traf­fic then make the area res­i­den­tial and not com­mer­cial." Last week T&T Guardian was told own­er Prim­nath Gee­lal was out of the coun­try and was ex­pect­ed to re­turn in Ju­ly. How­ev­er, the man said, he would re­turn on June 26 from Mi­a­mi but leave again very soon af­ter. The man said there were oth­er busi­ness­es which should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and there was no need to sin­gle out Gee­lal's which had been op­er­at­ing for decades. Taxi-dri­vers ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the mat­ter say­ing they spent up to half an hour in traf­fic be­cause de­liv­ery trucks and cus­tomers pa­tro­n­is­ing the busi­ness of­ten dou­ble park.

On Mon­day sev­er­al taxi-dri­ver mem­bers of the El So­cor­ro Taxi-Dri­vers' As­so­ci­a­tion staged a protest out­side the busi­ness which had closed its doors. MP for the Barataria/ San Juan con­stituen­cy Dr Fuad Khan ap­pealed to the pub­lic for good sense. Sev­er­al taxi-dri­vers yes­ter­day said they would keep up their protest ac­tion un­til the prob­lem was solved. The as­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to hold a meet­ing soon to dis­cuss its next course of ac­tion. The man al­so said when busi­ness­es "like these" are vin­di­cat­ed (vic­timised), the on­ly thing left to do was to mi­grate.

"It is busi­ness­men who cre­ate jobs, pro­vide trans­port and as­sist with un­em­ploy­ment and no mat­ter how much car park you pro­vide there will nev­er be suf­fi­cient," he said. He said the El So­cor­ro area was "vast­ly com­mer­cial." He said taxi-dri­vers of­ten had face-to-face en­coun­ters as a re­sult of the traf­fic chaos by "stop­ping, pick­ing up and park­ing up" and that "Mr Gee­lal was not go­ing to take a cuff for that."

Guardian in­ves­ti­gates

When T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the area there were sev­er­al large de­liv­ery trucks parked in front of the store to­wards the cor­ner of Fazal Av­enue. It was im­pos­si­ble to turn right from Fazal Av­enue on to El So­cor­ro Road be­cause of the size of the trucks of­fload­ing goods. The area was mon­i­tored for close to 90 min­utes and there was a con­stant pile-up of close to a dozen cars pro­ceed­ing north and south.