Shir­van Williams

May­or Louis Lee Sing is wor­ried that soon the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion may not be able ad­min­is­ter the prop­er dis­pos­al of garbage be­cause of lack of funds. Lee Sing was speak­ing with the T&T Guardian dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day. He said this was the third year that the cor­po­ra­tion's re­quest for fund­ing for new ve­hi­cles had been de­nied, and he did not know what op­tions re­mained to get the job done.

The ve­hi­cles that are in use now are out­dat­ed and bare­ly hold­ing on, he said, adding that he was tired of "the same old non­sense over and over" from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, he was adamant that the lack of fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment would not im­pede his plans for the city and he would not al­low the Gov­ern­ment to starve his or­gan­i­sa­tion of funds.

Lee Sing said he did not in­tend to give up on his vi­sion of Port-of-Spain. "Where there is a will there is a way. We will find cre­ative ways to make sure that we can seek the peo­ple's in­ter­est," he said. He said in gen­er­al the 2013 bud­get left a lot to be de­sired, point­ing to the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to raise funds to do what it pro­pos­es. He said the cor­po­ra­tion had re­ceived $2 mil­lion last year to erad­i­cate la­trine pits in the city, but he said no one ten­dered for the job.

Lee Sing said he was ex­pect­ing more fund­ing to com­plete this project but it was de­nied. He al­so said he want­ed the road at Au­gus­tine Lane, Bel­mont, fixed, be­cause the road caved in about ten months ago, pos­si­bly be­cause of ex­ca­va­tion work by a busi­ness­man in the area.

Since then no re­pairs have been done and the land around the road, which goes up a steep hill, con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate, caus­ing dan­ger to res­i­dents liv­ing near a precipice. He said he had spo­ken with Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, and re­mains hope­ful that he will get the as­sis­tance of the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme to help quick­ly rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion.

Lee Sing al­so said that he did not wish to com­ment on the re­cent takeover of his com­pa­ny, Citadel Lim­it­ed, by One Caribbean Me­dia, own­ers of the Trinidad Ex­press News­pa­per. He said he would rather keep his busi­ness af­fairs pri­vate.