Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne said re­cent wreck­ing and traf­fic en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es have al­ready im­proved move­ment in the cap­i­tal, as the City Cor­po­ra­tion push­es ahead with a broad­er plan to re­store or­der, clean streets and re­vi­talise pub­lic spaces.

Al­leyne said the coun­cil has re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back fol­low­ing in­creased en­force­ment against il­le­gal park­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly ve­hi­cles left in taxi stands and on street cor­ners.

He said the changes have made sev­er­al streets eas­i­er to tra­verse and re­duced com­plaints from agen­cies such as the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion.

He said the traf­fic dri­ve forms part of a wider, long-term plan for the city, even as the cor­po­ra­tion grap­ples with se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial con­straints, par­tic­u­lar­ly in garbage col­lec­tion.

The may­or al­so in­spect­ed the on­go­ing beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, where bench­es and garbage bins are be­ing re­paint­ed and the space re­stored.

Al­leyne not­ed the city has al­so launched a po­lice post on the prom­e­nade in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the City Po­lice Ser­vice, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies to en­sure safe­ty and or­der.

Garbage col­lec­tion, he said, re­mains “very dif­fi­cult” to man­age af­ter the coun­cil’s bud­get was cut from $21 mil­lion to just over $13 mil­lion.

De­spite the short­fall, Al­leyne said the cor­po­ra­tion has car­ried out week­end clean-up cam­paigns for the past two years in the lead-up to Christ­mas and will con­tin­ue through Christ­mas Eve, re­sum­ing again on Box­ing Day.

“We need the funds to be able to clean the city,” he said. “The city does not need less garbage col­lec­tion; it needs more, and that garbage col­lec­tion comes at a cost.”

Al­leyne said the cor­po­ra­tion us­es a mix of pri­vate con­trac­tors and in­ter­nal teams to man­age waste col­lec­tion and has ap­plied to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for ap­proval to use un­spent bal­ances to pur­chase much-need­ed equip­ment.

“Once we are able to pur­chase that fleet, it will sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove our abil­i­ty and our ca­pac­i­ty to col­lect garbage,” he said.

Look­ing ahead to 2026, Al­leyne said the coun­cil re­mains com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing its work de­spite what he de­scribed as “a long year with a lot of chal­lenges.”

He said re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­forts on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade will con­tin­ue, along­side a road patch­ing pro­gramme that has al­ready restart­ed across the city.

He added that ser­vice de­liv­ery will ex­tend be­yond the city cen­tre, re­mind­ing res­i­dents that “we have burgess­es in East Port of Spain as well, and they al­so re­quire ser­vice.”

Al­leyne said the coun­cil’s pri­or­i­ties for the com­ing year in­clude re­vi­tal­is­ing pub­lic spaces, strength­en­ing its fleet, im­prov­ing garbage col­lec­tion ca­pac­i­ty and main­tain­ing close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers.

The aim, he said, is clear: to present Port of Spain as a clean, safe and or­der­ly city.