Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Wreck­ing op­er­a­tions are set to re­turn to Port-of-Spain, as the City Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced yes­ter­day that en­force­ment will re­sume across the down­town busi­ness dis­trict start­ing Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a pub­lic no­tice from the cor­po­ra­tion’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, the ini­tia­tive tar­gets unau­tho­rised or im­prop­er­ly parked ve­hi­cles in the busy com­mer­cial zone. Un­der the scheme, all towed ve­hi­cles will be tak­en to the South Quay Carpark Fa­cil­i­ty for stor­age.

Mo­torists were urged to park legal­ly to avoid re­moval and the as­so­ci­at­ed fees for re­cov­er­ing a wrecked ve­hi­cle. The cor­po­ra­tion al­so re­mind­ed dri­vers that com­pli­ance with ex­ist­ing park­ing reg­u­la­tions re­mains manda­to­ry.

The move has drawn crit­i­cism from busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives, who ar­gue that the city’s park­ing reg­u­la­tions re­main un­clear.

Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), said:

“Port-of-Spain does not have clear­ly de­fined park­ing reg­u­la­tions. We have made this point re­peat­ed­ly, in­clud­ing in re­cent meet­ings with the new min­is­ter. We des­per­ate­ly want to dis­cuss a park­ing plan and an agreed-up­on, mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial set of rules that en­sures smooth traf­fic flow while al­so pro­vid­ing con­ve­nience for shop­pers in the city.”

Aboud added that over­ly strict en­force­ment could de­ter shop­pers and fur­ther harm the down­town area.

“A quick dri­ve through the city of Port-of-Spain shows what we are talk­ing about. Build­ings for sale or rent high­light the lack of at­trac­tive­ness to cus­tomers. This is not a new is­sue. Wreck­ing now feels like squeez­ing the last ounce of juice out of an or­ange that has al­ready been squeezed many times,” he said.

Wreck­ing in Port-of-Spain has a long his­to­ry of starts and stops. The prac­tice was sus­pend­ed for sev­er­al years fol­low­ing pub­lic com­plaints about the tow­ing of legal­ly parked cars and re­mained in­ac­tive dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

A planned re­sump­tion in June 2022 was post­poned, but op­er­a­tions even­tu­al­ly restart­ed on May 29, 2024, with 537 ve­hi­cles towed by Ju­ly that year. Since then, en­force­ment has fo­cused on the down­town area, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, and St James, with ve­hi­cles ini­tial­ly im­pound­ed at Dock Road.