KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing says he will com­plete his term, but Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment must find some­one of good rep­u­ta­tion to re­place him when he demits of­fice."There are a lot of peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice in this coun­try that are not good or hon­est."He said his term is sched­uled to end as soon as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar calls the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Lee Sing said he was ready to leave the past 36 "frus­trat­ing" months be­hind him.Lee Sing be­came May­or in Au­gust 2010."I don't know that the coun­try is ready for the change that it needs. I don't know that peo­ple have a de­sire for law and or­der in this coun­try," Lee Sing said.He said the de­sire in T&T was for peo­ple to get rich­er and such peo­ple were pre­pared to get rich­er at the ex­pense of oth­ers.

While Lee Sing said he was pre­pared to leave of­fice when his term end­ed, he added that he would re­gret not see­ing some of his plans, such as the glass-bot­tle ban for Car­ni­val, come in­to ef­fect.He said he hoped who­ev­er was cho­sen to re­place him would build on the plans his coun­cil had ini­ti­at­ed."We have not made progress with the street vend­ing, but this is be­cause we don't have all the cards

"I would give my­self a three out of ten points."We could have eas­i­ly fixed the prob­lem by en­forc­ing the no-vend­ing laws but I would not do that. I recog­nise that many peo­ple who vend do so to look af­ter them­selves and their fam­i­lies."He said he had been man­ag­ing the is­sue but the in­ter­fer­ence of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj had been de­ter­rents.

Lee Sing was more pos­i­tive about his ef­fect on street dwellers, though, rat­ing his ef­forts at sev­en out of ten."While I have not been able to take all of the peo­ple off the street, the city got the Gov­ern­ment's at­ten­tion and forced them to take de­ci­sive ac­tion to ad­dress the grow­ing prob­lem."Lee Sing felt that he was not a very well-liked may­or, re­call­ing the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion brought against him in ear­ly 2012 by Row­ley and the PNM.

Lee Sing has al­so been at log­ger­heads with the cor­po­ra­tion's CEO Win­nifred David over mor­tar placed on the wall of the Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery and Ram­bachan over un­re­leased funds to the cor­po­ra­tion.But de­spite the hur­dles, he said, he re­mains pas­sion­ate about the city, par­tic­u­lar­ly east Port-of-Spain."The Lee Sings all orig­i­nat­ed on Pic­ton Street. I am sup­posed to do right by the peo­ple of east Port-of-Spain."