Brent Zephyrine

King George V Park will no longer be used as a park­ing fa­cil­i­ty nor a venue for fetes. The an­nounce­ment came from Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing yes­ter­day as he was speak­ing with re­porters at a press con­fer­ence held at City Hall on Knox Street, Port-of-Spain. "Af­ter a care­ful re­view of all the in­for­ma­tion brought be­fore us the Coun­cil was unit­ed in its po­si­tion that it could no longer en­cour­age the use of King George V Park as a park­ing fa­cil­i­ty nor a fete venue," he said.

Lee Sing was re­spond­ing to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma whom he said "sought to im­pose his (Shar­ma) will on the Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion" when he pub­licly an­nounced on Fri­day that he had "over­turned" the park­ing re­stric­tions im­posed by the May­or in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate pa­trons who at­tend­ed the T20 Crick­et match be­tween West In­dies and In­dia yes­ter­day. He said: "What con­cerns me is that the Min­is­ter (Shar­ma) know­ing­ly set out to break the law and to set up a pos­si­ble con­fronta­tion be­tween the city ad­min­is­tra­tion and the cit­i­zen­ry of T&T."

"I pub­licly ap­peal to Min­is­ter Shar­ma to make a quan­tum leap away from the silli­ness that an­chors his think­ing and be­gin to recog­nise his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and I am ap­peal­ing to him on bend­ed knees to stop his wicked­ness and vin­dic­tive­ness di­rect­ed at the City of Port-of-Spain," he added. In cit­ing the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the Coun­cil's de­ci­sion, Lee Sing not­ed that there was both a gas line and a "ma­jor drain" run­ning un­der the Park and that the parked ve­hi­cles which con­stant­ly com­pact­ed the soil above, may have com­pro­mised their ef­fi­cien­cy and po­ten­tial­ly ex­pose burgess­es to "dis­as­ter" and flood­ing.

The May­or said up­on the Coun­cil's re­search of the Crown grant through which the City of Port-of-Spain in­her­it­ed King George V Park, one of the stip­u­la­tions were that it be "pri­mar­i­ly used for sports and recre­ation" and as such, saw it nec­es­sary to re­turn the Park to "what it was in­tend­ed to be". Lee Sing said fete and sport pro­mot­ers had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that al­ter­na­tive park­ing arrange­ments be put in place to fa­cil­i­tate their pa­trons and has sug­gest­ed that they "en­gage the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, to use their carpark and to shut­tle pa­trons to the Queen's Park Oval." "Too of­ten we short change our­selves in so­ci­ety and we de­mand too lit­tle for our hard-earned dol­lars," he added.