An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John has called for greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty from busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens in main­tain­ing Port-of-Spain, warn­ing that the Gov­ern­ment can­not car­ry the bur­den of keep­ing the cap­i­tal clean and its drainage sys­tem func­tion­ing on its own.

John was speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (AM­CHAM T&T) ESG con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad.

She point­ed to re­cent drain-clean­ing ex­er­cis­es in Port-of-Spain, in­clud­ing works un­der­tak­en by the High­ways Di­vi­sion on South Quay on Au­gust 17.

John said grease and oth­er waste had be­come a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem in the city’s drainage sys­tem.

She said the ex­tent of the prob­lem meant sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic re­sources were be­ing spent on clean­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

“Oth­er than that, the city is lit­er­al­ly sealed off. You see what is hap­pen­ing there, right? The city is lit­er­al­ly sealed. And we could have a re­al is­sue if we don’t go in there and clean it.”

John said hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were be­ing spent on cleanup ef­forts and ar­gued that greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was need­ed from busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in the cap­i­tal.

“That could be al­lo­cat­ed and award­ed dif­fer­ent­ly to dif­fer­ent places and spaces.”

She urged busi­ness­es to take greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ar­eas im­me­di­ate­ly out­side their es­tab­lish­ments.

“If you walk to Port-of-Spain, in front of those pave­ments, it’s all chipped, it’s filthy. You can’t come out and just throw some wa­ter and take a broom and scrub it. You can do that.”

John ques­tioned why busi­ness­es ben­e­fit­ing from com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty in the cap­i­tal should wait for the State to ad­dress ba­sic main­te­nance is­sues.

“Why are you wait­ing on the State to do that? You’re mak­ing the prof­it in­side of there.”

She stressed that re­silience and sus­tain­abil­i­ty re­quired par­tic­i­pa­tion be­yond Gov­ern­ment.

“So, ba­si­cal­ly, I think it’s every­body’s busi­ness. And we all have to come to­geth­er to do this work.”

The min­is­ter’s com­ments come as Port-of-Spain con­tin­ues to face re­cur­ring flood­ing con­cerns, with drainage main­te­nance re­main­ing a key is­sue.

She said the prob­lem was not lim­it­ed to Gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture and called for busi­ness­es to take greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for waste dis­pos­al and the con­di­tion of spaces around their premis­es.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne al­so called for a change in pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­wards waste dis­pos­al.

“As cit­i­zens, many of us need to change how we care for our en­vi­ron­ment. We need pri­vate cit­i­zens and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to dis­pose of their waste more re­spon­si­bly.”

Al­leyne said the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion would con­tin­ue work­ing with the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture and oth­er stake­hold­ers on the de­vel­op­ment of the cap­i­tal.