Zahra Gor­don

May­or of Port-of-Spain Louis Lee Sing has pledged to crack down on unau­tho­rised con­struc­tion of busi­ness hous­es and noise abuse along Ari­api­ta Av­enue. He sig­nalled his in­ten­tions at the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Lee Sing cit­ed es­tab­lish­ments, many of them in and around Ari­api­ta Av­enue, that vi­o­lat­ed city law by ei­ther build­ing en­tire struc­tures or mak­ing ad­di­tions to ex­ist­ing ones with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion. The con­tro­ver­sial may­or said the own­ers did not keep their cus­tomers in mind when plan­ning their busi­ness places and warned that many with unau­tho­rised ad­di­tions were un­safe. "This is a warn­ing to young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar, who fre­quent wa­ter­ing holes on Ari­api­ta Av­enue: many of the build­ings you so de­sire to sit in and be­lieve you are hav­ing the time of your life are not suit­ed, nor were they con­struct­ed to house hun­dreds of bod­ies," Lee Sing said.

The use of Ari­api­ta Av­enue for cor­po­rate ad­ver­tis­ing stunts will al­so be ad­dressed as ag­gres­sive­ly as pos­si­ble, he said. Lee Sing said cor­po­rate bod­ies con­tin­ue to use Ari­api­ta Av­enue for pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties, which usu­al­ly in­clude loud mu­sic trucks, al­though they have con­sis­tent­ly been de­nied per­mits by the city cor­po­ra­tion. Res­i­dents in the area are "ter­rorised" by the noise, he said. The ex­tra-du­ty al­lowances giv­en to po­lice of­fi­cers who mon­i­tor these pro­mo­tions are the main cause of the dis­re­gard of the city's or­ders not to host these events, Lee Sing said. "They are get­ting in­volved in city busi­ness not be­cause they want to, but be­cause there are ex­tra-du­ty al­lowances in­volved and there­fore that is a pri­or­i­ty over law and or­der," he said. Lee Sing al­so an­nounced that the city cor­po­ra­tion had agreed hold talks with the Min­istry of Tourism on plans to turn Ari­api­ta Av­enue in­to a tourist at­trac­tion.