The Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade was cor­doned off on Sat­ur­day as a re­sult of peo­ple flout­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions. This was re­vealed by Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez who al­so said that the co­conut ven­dors around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah are like­ly to be closed down al­so.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Mar­tinez said "Our Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice made an ob­ser­va­tion on Thurs­day on the Prom­e­nade that there were a lot of peo­ple clus­ter­ing and con­gre­gat­ing there, they were break­ing all the pro­to­col rules.

"That came to my at­ten­tion by a re­quest, we had a meet­ing on Fri­day with Coun­cil, Pub­lic Health, the po­lice, to­geth­er with the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Cor­po­ra­tion.

"We came to a de­ci­sion to cor­don off the Prom­e­nade to be able to dis­cour­age peo­ple from loi­ter­ing and con­gre­gat­ing, but at the same time, we will leave the pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties open for their con­ve­nience."

He said they were not able to get it done on Fri­day be­cause when he passed that night he saw that the sit­u­a­tion was out of hand with peo­ple lim­ing like it was a reg­u­lar Fri­day night and not dur­ing a pan­dem­ic.

Mar­tinez said he im­me­di­ate­ly in­struct­ed the po­lice to do car­ry out the ex­er­cise and they were able to ac­cess some bar­ri­ers from the TTPS and cau­tion tape to cor­don off the area.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion was al­so in­creas­ing po­lice pa­trols and pres­ence in the Cen­tral Mar­ket to en­sure smooth op­er­a­tions and al­so ven­dors and shop­pers alike were COVID-19 pro­to­col com­pli­ant.