Head of the Port-of-Spain Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Sur­ren­dra Sagram­s­ingh plans to ad­dress il­le­gal park­ing on two taxi stands along Hart Street, Port-of-Spain. The taxi dri­vers for the St Ann’s and St James routes use Hart Street as their taxi stands and have com­plained about the im­pact the il­le­gal park­ing has on their liveli­hoods.

“Park­ing in any taxi stand, it is a traf­fic of­fence to park in a taxi stand, even a taxi dri­ver,” Sagram­s­ingh said.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the taxi stands yes­ter­day, taxi dri­vers said that the park­ing in­creased dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic even though there was clear sig­nage on ei­ther side of the street and the words taxi stand paint­ed on des­ig­nat­ed lanes.

Vice Pres­i­dent of the St Ann’s Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Ronald Fred­er­ick ex­plained that when dri­vers park their pri­vate cars on their stand it pre­vents taxi dri­vers from ply­ing their trade.

The St Ann’s taxi dri­ver said they had spo­ken to rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and the po­lice but were not sat­is­fied with their re­spons­es.

“What has hap­pened, wreck­ing has ceased in Port-of-Spain so even if they were sup­posed to wreck the ve­hi­cles there is no place to put the ve­hi­cles in Port-of-Spain and a tick­et can­not be is­sued if you can­not find the dri­ver to is­sue the tick­et to,” Fred­er­ick ex­plained, say­ing this was what he and his col­leagues were told when they queried the il­le­gal park­ing on their stand.

Near Hart Street, there are many gov­ern­ment build­ings in­clu­sive of the Red House, and the Na­tion­al Li­brary. The street is even near the Reg­i­ment Head­quar­ters.

Fred­er­ick claimed that based on his ob­ser­va­tion, law en­force­ment of­fi­cials and oth­er pub­lic ser­vants may be re­spon­si­ble for some of the il­le­gal park­ing on Hart Street.

“We will see po­lice of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the de­fence force, peo­ple who work in the Red House—Par­lia­ment, even our li­brary and even from City Hall, that’s the ob­ser­va­tion. They will wear their var­i­ous uni­forms and we will see them park­ing here on the taxi stand,” he ex­plained.

Sagram­s­ingh as­sured those il­le­gal­ly park­ing on the taxi stands will first be warned and then pe­nalised.

“The fees are sort of steep, so you wouldn’t want to is­sue tick­ets to peo­ple just so,” Sagram­s­ingh said.

The cur­rent fine for park­ing on a taxi stand is $750.

No de­mer­it points will be de­duct­ed for this of­fence.