Kali­fa Clyne

Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee will meet with his pre­de­ces­sor Louis Lee Sing this week to dis­cuss, among oth­er things, Lee Sing's pro­pos­al to ban glass bot­tles from the cap­i­tal city on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.Tim Kee told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day he was not clear on the ra­tio­nale be­hind Lee Sing's pro­pos­al but would speak to the for­mer may­or re­gard­ing the idea.

"I will meet with the for­mer may­or (Lee Sing) this week and we will dis­cuss it and I will dis­cuss it with my coun­cil be­fore mak­ing any pub­lic state­ments," Tim Kee said.The plan, ini­ti­at­ed to cur­tail vi­o­lent in­ci­dents in the city dur­ing Car­ni­val, was pro­posed by Lee Sing in 2012, but the ef­fort was not giv­en min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval.Lee Sing, who wrote to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty sev­er­al times re­gard­ing the is­sue, was told that more time was need­ed to give con­sid­er­a­tion to the mat­ter.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said the mat­ter will be dis­cussed ahead of the 2014 Car­ni­val sea­son."We can­not base de­ci­sions like that on a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual's per­cep­tion," Grif­fith said."It could be of ben­e­fit but we have to en­sure that we have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to en­force it and that it would be of sub­stan­tial val­ue."It would take a lot more di­a­logue."

Grif­fith said the is­sue will be dis­cussed with Tim Kee and oth­er stake­hold­ers as part of a Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) com­mit­tee on se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures through­out the Car­ni­val sea­son.He said he want­ed to be per­son­al­ly in­volved in the com­mit­tee."There are dozens of oth­er ini­tia­tives for the Car­ni­val sea­son which are on the ta­ble."Grif­fith said, mea­sures to en­sure pub­lic safe­ty would be in­creased in 2014.

"We have the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NSOC) head­quar­ters at Knowsley and we will fo­cus on in­creased se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures."Grif­fith said the NSOC would make full use of he­li­copters to mon­i­tor po­lice pa­trols and use GPS track­ing for bands dur­ing the two-day na­tion­al fes­ti­val.