With the gov­ern­ment’s lat­est COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions leav­ing on­ly es­sen­tial ser­vices op­er­a­tional, the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion has sus­pend­ed the wreck­ing of ve­hi­cles from yes­ter­day.

The City Coun­cil took the de­ci­sion dur­ing a meet­ing on Tues­day and a pub­lic no­tice stat­ed that the break would con­tin­ue un­til fur­ther no­tice. It comes as pub­lic and pri­vate car parks shut down last Thurs­day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a par­tial lock­down as in­creas­ing COVID-19 cas­es threat­ened to over­whelm the State’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo did not take Guardian Me­dia’s calls on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, through Face­book, he said the down­side to the de­ci­sion was that peo­ple would re­turn to old habits, such as park­ing their ve­hi­cles and go­ing about their busi­ness, with­out care for whom they have in­con­ve­nienced.

Giv­ing ex­am­ples, Re­grel­lo said mo­torists would park in front of Pen­ny­wise along Pointe-a-Pierre Road, op­po­site the Mara­bel­la taxi stand, re­sult­ing in sin­gle-lane traf­fic in the area. He said in­dis­crim­i­nate dri­vers tend to block the dri­ve­ways of busi­ness­es and pri­vate res­i­dences, park on des­ig­nat­ed taxi stands or leave their ve­hi­cles in the in­ner city and trav­el to Port-of-Spain for long pe­ri­ods.

“These are some of the is­sues that the po­lice are re­quired to deal with. Hope­ful­ly, we would all act re­spon­si­bly dur­ing this pe­ri­od,” Re­grel­lo said.

In light of the in­creased spread of COVID-19, the City Coun­cil al­so de­cid­ed on a tem­po­rary change of the open­ing and clos­ing hours of the Mara­bel­la and Cen­tral mar­kets. In Mara­bel­la, the Sun­day mar­ket will op­er­ate from 4 am-1 pm; Mon­day to Thurs­day, 6 am-4 pm; Fri­day, 4 am-4 pm and will be closed on Sat­ur­day.

The Cen­tral Mar­ket will op­er­ate Mon­day-Sat­ur­day from 5 am-4 pm and close on Sun­days. The Fish Mar­ket at King’s Wharf will open from 5 am-1 pm, Mon­day to Sat­ur­day. The changes take ef­fect from mid­night on Sat­ur­day un­til fur­ther no­tice.