Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne wants cit­i­zens and tourists to know the city is open and safe this Christ­mas sea­son, with a 24/7 po­lice pres­ence on In­de­pen­dence Square and its en­vi­rons.

Al­leyne made the an­nounce­ment at the launch of the Christ­mas in D Square open-air mar­ket on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day, re­veal­ing that city po­lice had al­ready made an ar­rest fol­low­ing the open­ing of the new po­lice post on the prom­e­nade last Fri­day.

“There was one in­ci­dent that I’m aware of where the po­lice were able to re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly and ap­pre­hend the per­pe­tra­tor...So I want to con­grat­u­late that city po­lice of­fi­cer for that dili­gence. It was an at­tempt­ed rob­bery, and the city po­lice were on site, be­ing able to take ac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly,” Al­leyne said.

He told Guardian Me­dia that the city cor­po­ra­tion has a keen fo­cus on re­vi­tal­is­ing the city cen­tre, and for that rea­son, has in­vest­ed in the po­lice post and will con­tin­ue to in­vest in this space.

“Port-of-Spain is open for busi­ness. We want every­body to come down­town. There is a lot to do here, whether shop­ping, recre­ation or cul­ture. That is why the coun­cil saw it fit to in­vest in the po­lice post on the prom­e­nade,” he said.

The City Cor­po­ra­tion re­sumed wreck­ing on De­cem­ber 1, and Al­leyne re­vealed that this is part of their safe­ty plan for the cap­i­tal.

“We have re­ceived sev­er­al com­plaints from the Fire Ser­vice, am­bu­lance ser­vices and the PTSC, not­ing dif­fi­cul­ty tra­vers­ing city streets,” he said.

Al­leyne said park­ing en­force­ment en­sures peo­ple and emer­gency ser­vices can move through the city with ease.
He added that there are park­ing lots and garages avail­able down­town, and urged mo­torists to be re­spon­si­ble.

Deputy May­or Abena Hart­ley ex­plained that Christ­mas in D Square was a city cor­po­ra­tion ini­tia­tive aimed at cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ar­ti­sans and crafts­peo­ple to sell their goods dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.

She ex­plained that the mar­ket was timed to co­in­cide with the ar­rival of cruise ships, giv­ing ven­dors in­creased foot traf­fic and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure.

Hart­ley not­ed that this year’s small­er mar­ket fea­tures ten long-stand­ing ven­dors and re­flects the cor­po­ra­tion’s ef­fort to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er events, while con­tin­u­ing to in­vite lo­cals to show­case their prod­ucts in the cap­i­tal.

“We have two ships here, to­talling about 3,300 peo­ple. And we’ve been see­ing tourists com­ing and en­joy­ing the space, com­ing and look­ing at the artists and stuff,” she said.

Two cruise ships, the Coral Princess and Ex­plo­ra II, docked in T&T yes­ter­day.

Cana­di­an tourist Sarah said she felt safe amid sev­er­al warn­ings about crime in this coun­try.

“It’s our first time, and ac­tu­al­ly we did not ex­pect to see this be­cause we got so many ad­vi­sories, but I think we are safe, I think all these po­lice men will keep us safe,” she said.

Ven­dor Avonelle Hec­tor, who al­so heads Is There Not A Cause NGO and Youths of Pur­pose, said she felt safe with the high po­lice pres­ence on the prom­e­nade. She said the pro­ceeds from their booth will go to young peo­ple in Pa­lo Seco.