Melis­sa Doughty

Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing is promis­ing to re­move a fence cur­rent­ly be­ing erect­ed on King George V Park, at the cor­ner of Eliz­a­beth Street and St Clair Av­enue in Port-of-Spain. The fence is be­ing erect­ed di­rect­ly op­po­site the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre and Queen's Park Oval. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day Lee Sing said he was un­cer­tain who was re­spon­si­ble for the erec­tion of the fence but de­clared it would be re­moved. He said deputy may­or Keron Valen­tine re­cent­ly brought the con­struc­tion of the fence to his at­ten­tion.

Lee Sing, who was not in T&T at the time of the in­ter­view, said he was un­able to get in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter from the city en­gi­neer and oth­er of­fi­cials at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion as to who grant­ed au­tho­ri­sa­tion for the erec­tion of the fence. "Who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble for the con­crete fence would have to take it down," he said. The space, he said, was an im­por­tant one for King George V Park and the ques­tion has to be asked on whose au­thor­i­ty is the fence be­ing con­struct­ed.

The area was one grant­ed to St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre for use as a car park but no fur­ther au­tho­ri­sa­tion was grant­ed for the fence to be built."I will not sup­port the erec­tion of the fence," Lee Sing said. When asked what is go­ing to be done now, Lee Sing said: "The mat­ter is be­ing ad­dressed and we are go­ing to do what we must on the mat­ter." He said the grant­i­ng of the space as a car park was a lux­u­ry to the ten­ant.

He de­scribed as "un­think­able" the con­struc­tion of the fence on King George V Park as since the cor­po­ra­tion went through "great pains" to re­store the park. "We have a sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple feel any­thing goes," he said. Calls to St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre were un­suc­cess­ful since T&T Guardian was in­formed the rel­e­vant of­fi­cials to an­swer ques­tions on the mat­ter were not present.