Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Burgess­es of the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion are call­ing on the coun­cil to put aside their po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences and fo­cus on de­liv­er­ing ser­vices to res­i­dents.

The ap­peal fol­lows a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive spe­cial statu­to­ry meet­ing that end­ed in dis­agree­ment, with Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) al­der­man Christo­pher Max Enci­nas be­ing es­cort­ed from the coun­cil cham­ber on the in­struc­tion of May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo on Wednes­day.

The lat­est meet­ing came just days af­ter a Sep­tem­ber 8 spe­cial statu­to­ry meet­ing end­ed with PNM coun­cil­lors walk­ing out.

Av­o­cat res­i­dent Sim­boo­dath Beepath yes­ter­day said PNM and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lors need to re­solve their dif­fer­ences and get back to the busi­ness of serv­ing res­i­dents.

“Get your act to­geth­er, every­body come to­geth­er and get this solve,” Beepath said.

“Pol­i­tics aside and get the thing solve. Every­body pay­ing tax­es, get the prob­lem out of the way and serve the peo­ple.”

He said the roads need to be re­paired and the grass needs to be main­tained.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Suresh Per­sad, of St John’s Trace, said the coun­cil­lors should re­solve their dif­fer­ences ma­ture­ly.

“All peo­ple are big ma­ture peo­ple, and I think they could make their dif­fer­ences heard and be­have like ma­ture peo­ple. If they don’t do that, then the cor­po­ra­tion will lose all its sup­port and all the res­i­dents will be af­fect­ed.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Den­zil Ed­wards, of Ves­signy Vil­lage said the con­tin­ued dis­agree­ments were not serv­ing the pub­lic well.

“The bick­er­ing it not look­ing good in the gen­er­al pub­lic on both sides. As a cit­i­zen, we will like to see both sides come to­geth­er and func­tion bet­ter in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty.”

He al­so raised con­cerns about the im­pact of the dis­putes on the de­liv­ery of ser­vices.

In re­sponse to the burgess­es’ con­cerns, May­or Mayrhoo said it is not just a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion but a grab for con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion by the PNM.

“The PNM grab for pow­er is to­tal­ly against the Stand­ing Or­der that gov­erns lo­cal gov­ern­ment,” he said.

He gave the as­sur­ance, how­ev­er, that he and the UNC coun­cil­lors will con­tin­ue to work in the in­ter­est of their burgess­es and the cor­po­ra­tion.

“PNM needs to get their act to­geth­er, he added.

Mean­while, PNM coun­cil­lor An­ton George said they are will­ing to work with any­one who has the best in­ter­est of the burgess­es at heart.

“We will al­ways work with­in am­bits of the law and in the best in­ter­est of the Burgess­es.”

The cor­po­ra­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly been con­trolled by the UNC, but fol­low­ing the death of a UNC coun­cil­lor and two oth­ers shift­ing al­le­giance, the PNM now holds the con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty with sev­en seats to the UNC’s five.