Geisha Kow­lessar

It has tak­en two years just to an­nounce the Port-of-Spain Egress Plan, says Robin By­noe, coun­cil­lor for St James West and chair­man of the Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and OS­HA com­pli­ance of­fi­cer for the city of Port-of-Spain. He said the plan was com­plet­ed and signed off since De­cem­ber 17, 2010, but "for some rea­son or the oth­er" man­age­ment kept drag­ging its feet about an­nounc­ing it pub­licly.

Asked the rea­son for the de­lay, By­noe blamed pol­i­tics, say­ing: "I am the on­ly UNC coun­cil­lor and I have man­aged to pull to­geth­er a di­verse team to come up with this plan and the man­age­ment of the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion took so long to an­nounce it."

Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing ac­cused the cor­po­ra­tion's man­age­ment of be­ing a law un­to it­self and agreed By­noe was right to be frus­trat­ed. He said while the rules of en­gage­ment sug­gest­ed the CEO of the cor­po­ra­tion was du­ty-bound to car­ry out de­ci­sions by the coun­cil, there was no stip­u­lat­ed time or man­ner in which they should be car­ried out.

Lee Sing al­so ac­cused a se­nior mem­ber of man­age­ment of "be­ing in over her head," say­ing: "Is on­ly when she is threat­ened by mem­bers then she makes an at­tempt to act." An ad for the Egress Plan, to be put in­to ef­fect dur­ing se­vere flood­ing in Port-of-Spain, ap­peared in the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day and still car­ried an em­bar­rass­ing er­ror,

It iden­ti­fied the Wild Flower Park on Queen's Park West as the Wild­fowl Trust, which is in Pointe-a-Pierre. Ear­li­er this week, it ap­peared in an­oth­er news­pa­per with the same mis­take. By­noe, who said he re­ceived calls yes­ter­day to say there were er­rors in the ad­ver­tise­ment, said the city cor­po­ra­tion was sup­posed to show him a copy of the ad be­fore it was placed in the news­pa­per.

"I am un­aware they even put out the ad in the pa­pers. I would hope the mis­take would be cor­rect­ed straight­away be­cause they did it in­de­pen­dent of knowl­edge," said By­noe, the lone UNC coun­cil­lor on the PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion. He chas­tised the cor­po­ra­tion for plac­ing the ad in one news­pa­per at a time, in­stead of hav­ing the ad run si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

By­noe said mem­bers of the cor­po­ra­tion were ex­pect­ed to meet with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh next week when he re­turned from gov­ern­ment busi­ness over­seas. He said Gopeesingh's min­istry al­ready had said it was will­ing to meet to dis­cuss how the plan would af­fect schools. The Egress Plan is dif­fer­ent from an evac­u­a­tion plan, By­noe said.

He added evac­u­a­tion en­tailed get­ting every­one out of the city, while an egress plan was about con­trol­ling the flow of peo­ple in an or­der­ly man­ner to min­imise the dis­rup­tion to busi­ness­es. The el­der­ly and the dis­abled al­so would be well cared and catered for, he said.

By­noe said if the plan should come in­to ef­fect, there could be col­lec­tion points for women, chil­dren, the el­der­ly and the dis­abled. He added: "We have worked with every­one pos­si­ble on this plan, in­clud­ing the De­fence Force and the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt), to en­sure no one is left be­hind.

"Women, chil­dren, el­der­ly peo­ple and the dis­abled would be first pri­or­i­ty to get them moved from one point to an­oth­er. "Part of the plan was hav­ing PTSC have bus­es read­i­ly avail­able." A dry run of the plan is ex­pect­ed to take place next Jan­u­ary. By­noe said with the Christ­mas sea­son ap­proach­ing it would be dif­fi­cult for the run to take place this year.

He said he al­so was work­ing on an­oth­er plan re­lat­ing to earth­quakes in Port-of-Spain. By­noe al­so ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that the cor­po­ra­tion was drag­ging its feet on an OS­HA's evac­u­a­tion plan for City Hall which he al­ready had draft­ed.