An­na-Lisa Paul

Mo­torists who be­lieve they have been towed from au­tho­rised park­ing zones in the cap­i­tal city can now con­test their case and use video footage from the wreck­er to sup­port their case.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez said yes­ter­day that all wreck­ers au­tho­rised by the cor­po­ra­tion had been out­fit­ted with cam­eras. He ad­mit­ted that there were in­stances where "the wreck­er, in their en­thu­si­asm, may pick up ve­hi­cles in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly."

"I am try­ing to put things in place to en­sure that is min­imised. We have added cam­eras to the wreck­ers so if some­one feels their ve­hi­cle has been in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly picked up, they can come to the po­lice sta­tion and lodge a re­port. We will look back at the footage and if it is they were ag­griev­ed, we will re­im­burse them." The fine for il­le­gal park­ing in the city is $500.

He was speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a launch at St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain do­na­tion dri­ve.

At his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, urged Mar­tinez to deal with il­le­gal park­ing in the city, with the in­stal­la­tion of park­ing me­ters and the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion in the city.

Mar­tinez said yes­ter­day there was con­ges­tion in the cap­i­tal ow­ing to the num­ber of ve­hi­cles on the na­tion's roads.

Cit­ing a sit­u­a­tion which oc­curred on Mon­day where a res­i­dent had parked on the road be­fore en­ter­ing his prop­er­ty to se­cure the dogs be­fore dri­ving in, Mar­tinez said the ve­hi­cle was wrecked "be­cause it was parked on the op­po­site side of the road."

He as­sured, "I lis­tened to the burgess and will ad­dress the mat­ter."

On the is­sue of home­less peo­ple in the city, Mar­tinez said he had sev­er­al meet­ings with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and in­clud­ed of­fi­cials from the min­istries of Health, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, who were all in­volved in a project ini­ti­at­ed by his pre­de­ces­sor.

He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had been in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the project.

"We are set­ting up a task force and try­ing to come to a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing as to how to treat with the street dwellers," he said.

He said there were dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of street dwellers and the task force had to de­ter­mine what was need­ed for each cat­e­go­ry which in­clud­ed the men­tal­ly ill, med­ical­ly ill, de­por­tees, el­der­ly, gen­er­al per­sons who fell through the cracks and drug ad­dicts.

"We have to de­ter­mine how to treat with them and we want to deal with it quick­ly. We don't just want talk, we want to be able to dri­ve it and get some ac­tion out it quick­ly," he said.

He ac­knowl­edged that fear of these per­sons had kept vis­i­tors away from the cap­i­tal but he was con­fi­dent that with the right pro­ce­dures and treat­ment, many of these peo­ple could be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and reg­u­lat­ed.