Kali­fa Clyne

To avoid a $500 fine and the has­sle and frus­tra­tion of re­triev­ing their prop­er­ty, ve­hi­cle own­ers who park in west Port-of-Spain should avoid park­ing on street cor­ners, near fire hy­drants, in front of the en­trances of pri­vate res­i­dences and on side­walks.

This is the edict from Port-of-Spain May­or Keron Valen­tine, which he an­nounced dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day as he said the cor­po­ra­tion would re­sume wreck­ing. The pol­i­cy will be im­ple­ment­ed on March 1.

West Port-of-Spain com­pris­es the bound­aries of Rich­mond Street in the East, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in the North, Wright­son Road in the South and Mu­cu­rapo Road in the West at the cor­ner of Carl­ton Av­enue and Jef­fers Lane, St James

While there has been con­sis­tent wreck­ing in the city cen­tre, this was car­ried out by the Po­lice Ser­vice. The cor­po­ra­tion ceased wreck­ing in the west­ern part of the city, in­clu­sive of ar­eas such as pop­u­lar Tra­garete Road and Ari­api­ta Av­enue, in 2013. The ces­sa­tion of wreck­ing was sup­port­ed by Valen­tine at the time, who was then deputy may­or and chair of the city's se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee.

It came af­ter nu­mer­ous com­plaints by cit­i­zens that wreck­ers were not fol­low­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate guide­lines of try­ing to lo­cate ve­hi­cle own­ers and were car­ry­ing out their func­tions reck­less­ly. Valen­tine de­scribed it as a "nui­sance."

Two years lat­er, the coun­cil's de­ci­sion to re­sume wreck­ing has his full sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the coun­cil hopes to bal­ance the rights of home own­ers with the busi­ness in­ter­ests of the city. "The Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion has re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls and com­plaints from res­i­dents and burgess­es of the in­crease in in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing and block­ing of dri­ve­ways and park­ing on side­walks," Valen­tine said yes­ter­day.

"All in all we have lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly to the calls and the cries of our burgess­es main­ly and we have de­cid­ed to rein­tro­duce wreck­ing but un­der a new pol­i­cy." The new pol­i­cy lim­its the hours wreck­ing will be in ef­fect to busi­ness hours and fo­cus­es on key ar­eas, main­ly side­walks, near fire hy­drants, cor­ners and en­trances to res­i­dences and busi­ness­es.

Valen­tine said the pre­vi­ous im­ple­men­ta­tion of wreck­ing un­der for­mer may­or Louis Lee Sing had be­come a hus­tle for op­er­a­tors of wreck­ers. The fi­nan­cial arrange­ment be­tween the cor­po­ra­tion and wreck­ing com­pa­nies split the earn­ings with $300 go­ing to the wreck­ing com­pa­ny for each ve­hi­cle and the re­main­ing $200 to the city cor­po­ra­tion for ad­min­is­tra­tive costs.

The city cor­po­ra­tion is still in the process of pur­chas­ing two wreck­ers but has con­tract­ed two wreck­ing com­pa­nies for now."We have giv­en a stern warn­ing to wreck­ing op­er­a­tors that this is not just a mat­ter of wreck­ing a car. We will be fo­cused on burgess­es who are in­con­ve­nienced. "The cor­po­ra­tion spends a lot of mon­ey on re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing side­walks through­out the city an­nu­al­ly and some­times you go and see heavy ve­hi­cles, ce­ment trucks parked on the side­walk caus­ing them to cave in." The pol­i­cy al­so re­quires wreck­ers to be out­fit­ted with front and rear cam­eras so that po­lice can close­ly mon­i­tor wreck­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

"It is go­ing to be fair and above board," said act­ing su­per­in­ten­dent of the city po­lice Er­i­ca Pri­eto. "This is not a prof­it sit­u­a­tion. The po­lice are here to sup­port the de­ci­sions of coun­cil and by and large we are here to serve the com­mu­ni­ty. "We are as­sur­ing burgess­es they can call on us. Peo­ple who feel trapped in their homes and feel in­con­ve­nienced be­cause their dri­ve­ways are blocked, they can call on the city po­lice to as­sist at 290-3068."

MORE IN­FO

?The days of wreck­ing in west Port-of-Spain will be as fol­lows:

�2Mon­day to Wednes­day from 10 am to 6 pm

�2Thurs­day from 10 am to mid­night

�2Fri­day 10am to 2 am

�2Sat­ur­day 6 pm to 2 am

Ve­hi­cles re­moved from these ar­eas will be stored at the cor­po­ra­tion's park­ing lot at the west­ern end of Wright­son Road.

On Char­lotte Street, wreck­ing hours will be the fol­low­ing:

�2Mon­day to Fri­day from 10 am to 4 pm.

Ve­hi­cles re­moved on Char­lotte Street will be stored at the TTPS Traf­fic Branch on Abat­toir Road, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to the Road Traf­fic Act Chap­ter 48:50 as amend­ed by Act 5 of 2010, sec­tion 108 sub 1, all po­lice of­fi­cers have the au­thor­i­ty to re­move any mo­tor ve­hi­cle found in con­tra­ven­tion of the pro­vi­sions made un­der the act or any oth­er reg­u­la­tions made or or­der made.