RHON­DOR DOWLAT

No per­mis­sion has been grant­ed for ve­hi­cles to park in­side Nel­son Man­dela Park.

That was Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne’s re­sponse yes­ter­day, af­ter the ve­hi­cles of sev­er­al pa­trons at­tend­ing the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) match be­tween the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors and Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers on Wednes­day night were wrecked dur­ing the game.

There was pub­lic out­rage af­ter videos were post­ed on so­cial me­dia show­ing ve­hi­cles be­ing towed from Nel­son Man­dela Park while the match was in progress at the near­by Queen’s Park Oval.

How­ev­er, this on­ly oc­curred af­ter a group of in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly broke the lock at the park and be­gan charg­ing dri­vers a fee to park in­side. When po­lice of­fi­cers from the Traf­fic Branch be­came aware of the unau­tho­rised park­ing, they or­dered the ve­hi­cles re­moved.

“There was no au­tho­rised park­ing in the park for the event. Prop­er pro­ce­dures for park­ing man­age­ment were not fol­lowed,” an of­fi­cer ex­plained yes­ter­day, ahead of TKR’s game against the An­tigua Fal­cons.

The po­lice have since warned mo­torists to com­ply with traf­fic laws and to park on­ly in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas. They warned that fail­ure to do so would re­sult in en­force­ment ac­tions.

The in­ci­dent prompt­ed de­bate on so­cial me­dia, with sev­er­al peo­ple crit­i­cis­ing the ac­tions of the po­lice.

Van­shi Shiv­am Shiv­o­ham wrote: “Imag­ine crick­et game over, and you have to go look for your ve­hi­cle this time of the night in a dan­ger­ous city and to­mor­row is work. Smh. To hell with this place.”

Krys­tal Sylvester-Black­man echoed that sen­ti­ment, sug­gest­ing a boy­cott of fu­ture games, while an­oth­er frus­trat­ed at­tendee, Mala Sir­ju, ex­pressed her dis­ap­point­ment: “This is re­al­ly sad. DON’T SUP­PORT CRICK­ET IF PARK­ING IS NOT PRO­VID­ED.”

Just be­fore to 6 pm yes­ter­day, peo­ple near the Oval, where TKR’s sec­ond match was about to start, re­port­ed that wreck­ing was again tak­ing place around the venue.

Up to late yes­ter­day, CPL of­fi­cials did not re­spond to calls for com­ment on the park­ing arrange­ments.