Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er re­ceived prais­es from Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing for get­ting the job done, while Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma re­ceived thumbs down. Lee Sing said he met with Warn­er on Wednes­day night to dis­cuss is­sues of flood­ing in the cap­i­tal since the rainy sea­son has start­ed. Lee Sing said: "One thing I can say about Min­is­ter Warn­er is that when­ev­er I sit with him I get a good sense that there will be progress." He was speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion's month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The may­or said a de­ci­sion was tak­en to be­gin the process of clean­ing out all the clogged un­der­ground ar­ter­ies in the city and he was op­ti­mistic of that hap­pen­ing soon. "We know, too, that the rains are about to be up­on us and one of our main wa­ter cours­es-the East Dry Riv­er and in par­tic­u­lar, those parts lead­ing di­rect­ly in­to Pic­cadil­ly Street are still not cleaned," he said. Lee Sing called on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to do what it had to in or­der to en­sure there was not a re­peat of last year's flood­ing.

Lee Sing said he and Warn­er were sim­i­lar in that they liked "to get the job done."

Min­is­ter Shar­ma, how­ev­er, was yet again se­vere­ly crit­i­cised for his lack of ap­proval for projects for the city. Lee Sing read sev­er­al let­ters he had writ­ten to Shar­ma and said he was still await­ing re­spons­es.

He said: "I have been pur­su­ing this thing metic­u­lous­ly and with pa­tience."

Dog li­cences com­ing back

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­po­ra­tion's Pub­lic Health Com­mit­tee re­port, Lee Sing said ef­forts were be­ing made to en­sure there was no more erec­tion of la­trine pits in the city. He said there were more than 3,000. He said the Waste Dis­pos­al Unit was fac­ing chal­lenges by hav­ing its two ve­hi­cles out of com­mis­sion and there was a lack of prop­er equip­ment to clean the la­trine pits. "I hope the rains don't come soon," he said. The may­or al­so said there was an in­creased num­ber of ro­dents in ar­eas such as St James, Char­lotte, Prince and George Streets and Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook.

He said there were still many ques­tions sur­round­ing the K-9 Unit giv­en the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dogs.

Lee Sing said: "The city is mov­ing to study at this time and to im­ple­ment, first case, the rein­tro­duc­tion of dog li­cences." He said it would be a lu­cra­tive source of rev­enue and would re­quire peo­ple to come for­ward and say where there were dogs. "If peo­ple don't come and li­cence the dogs, we will go and li­cence the dogs our­selves and col­lect monies at the same time," he added.