Sev­er­al small busi­ness own­ers in the cap­i­tal are call­ing on the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to of­fer shop­pers al­ter­na­tive park­ing arrange­ments dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.

They said the re­sump­tion of wreck­ing down­town last week is scar­ing po­ten­tial cus­tomers away.

Kee­da Mo­hammed, the own­er of So­ho Vil­lage, a small cloth­ing store on Fred­er­ick Street, com­plained that the park­ing arrange­ments favour those with mon­ey.

“Boy, hear what is go­ing on in town right now. The wreck­ers mov­ing like hye­nas. They are on­ly pick­ing up peo­ple’s thing and go­ing and, at the end of the day, it is poor peo­ple shop­ping in town.

“I could re­mem­ber years ago, you coul­da park any­where and still come back and meet your car, if you park in town now, you have to be peep­ing be­cause peo­ple are al­ways peep­ing at your car,” he com­plained.

Romel Mar­tin, the on­line sales as­so­ciate of cloth­ing store 212 Lo­ca­tion on Fred­er­ick Street, agreed that park­ing op­tions in the cap­i­tal city were too lim­it­ed. He said dur­ing the week, shop­pers put off by paid park­ing prices scram­ble for park­ing spots.

“There are some­times you come down in town as one man come out, some­one try­ing to fit in and when a per­son tries to fit, a next per­son try­ing to fit at the same time. So no…and es­pe­cial­ly the car parks, some peo­ple don’t want to take the carparks be­cause they are way too ex­pen­sive,” he said.

The own­er of Cen­ter Stage store, who pre­ferred not to give her name, said wreck­ing has been a clear de­ter­rent for shop­pers. She be­lieved it was un­ac­cept­able for wreck­ing to re­turn dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.

“Es­pe­cial­ly this month, now it’s go­ing to be the busiest time af­ter we suf­fered the whole year and now they are go­ing to start wreck­ing. So, prob­lems. Peo­ple will not want to come in­to town be­cause they can’t find a park,” she said.

How­ev­er, one store man­ag­er, Jon­ah Paul of Tech Ac­cess Lim­it­ed, thought there was suf­fi­cient park­ing. 

“Yeah, I think with the help of the parkades in the area, I think it should be suf­fi­cient,” he said.

Wreck­ing in the cap­i­tal ini­tial­ly re­sumed last June, but it stopped af­ter the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s wreck­ers re­quired re­pairs.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne an­nounced the re­turn of wreck­ing dur­ing the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s month­ly meet­ing last week.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia ob­served more than a dozen ve­hi­cles be­ing towed. The re­lease fine is $500.