Tau­reef Mo­hammed

A lack of fund­ing is re­spon­si­ble for the poor work­ing con­di­tions at City Hall, Knox Street, says Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee.Speak­ing to re­porters at the un­veil­ing of the com­mem­o­ra­tive sign at the Nel­son Man­dela Park, St Clair, Tim Kee said, "Since last year [City Hall] was sup­posed to be fixed. We ap­plied for $16 mil­lion last year and we didn't get the mon­ey to do that."Say­ing he be­came may­or on­ly six months ago, Tim Kee said he was not re­spon­si­ble for the present con­di­tion of City Hall.

"I came here just a few months ago. All you see there was ob­tained long be­fore my com­ing and a lot of peo­ple are throw­ing things in my di­rec­tion, but the con­di­tion that it is now in, that didn't hap­pen overnight. And the ad­di­tion to the build­ing for the of­fice of the may­or didn't hap­pen in six months."He said the cor­po­ra­tion was giv­en a small sum for mi­nor re­pairs to the build­ing. "We got mon­ey for very mun­dane things but noth­ing sub­stan­tial, noth­ing that can be deemed to be cap­i­tal," he said.

Tim Kee said the $16 mil­lion ap­plied for would be used to up­grade the en­tire build­ing. On Thurs­day, led by Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, city po­lice and pub­lic health in­spec­tors at City Hall re­fused to work, cit­ing un­safe work­ing con­di­tions.Tim Kee said work­ers had a right to refuse to work un­der poor health and safe­ty con­di­tions, and the cor­po­ra­tion was in the process of find­ing a place to tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cate them.

"That's their right. We still live in a democ­ra­cy, and with the very lit­tle re­sources that we have, which can­not go very far, we are mak­ing every ef­fort to make some ad­just­ments."He said in­spec­tors from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (Os­ha) planned to vis­it the build­ing and their rec­om­men­da­tions would be con­sid­ered.

Tim Kee said he was in dis­cus­sions with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment on fund­ing for ren­o­va­tion work, and al­so in dis­cus­sions with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to make sure that polic­ing in and around the city was not com­pro­mised.Some of the protest­ing work­ers, he added, worked on Thurs­day, al­though they re­fused to en­ter the build­ing. He could not say if the work­ers came out to work yes­ter­day.