Charles Kong Soo

Plans for the Ari­ma Di­al to have the new re­place­ment clock placed atop the his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ment's orig­i­nal base are un­der con­sid­er­a­tion says Ari­ma May­or Ghas­san Youseph. The Bor­ough's fa­mous land­mark has been a bea­con for res­i­dents for more than 100 years. "We are ex­plor­ing all op­tions be­cause of the con­cerns of the burgess­es and the peo­ple's sen­ti­ment for the old Di­al," he said. "We don't know if we will be suc­cess­ful, but we want to see if we can use the old base and re­mount the new clock on it. "That is what we're try­ing." Youseph was speak­ing at the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion statu­to­ry meet­ing at the Town Hall, Sorzano Street, Ari­ma, last Thurs­day. "There is a com­pa­ny in south that re­pairs cast iron works. "If we can get that done in­stead of erect­ing a new base stand we will try that." The Di­al was giv­en to the peo­ple of Ari­ma as a gift by for­mer May­or John Fran­cis Wallen in 1908. The clock was pur­chased in Nice, France, and was placed in the cen­tre of the town at the cor­ner of Broad­way and Wood­ford Street, and has since been known as the Ari­ma Di­al.

The chimes of the clock were said to give the peo­ple of Ari­ma a sense of time, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the start of a new day. No longer chim­ing, the Di­al is known nowa­days more as a land­mark than a time­piece. Youseph said the bor­ough cor­po­ra­tion was try­ing to in­cor­po­rate the Di­al with­in its traf­fic reg­u­la­tion plans. "Right now we're dis­cussing with traf­fic man­age­ment," he said. "They may have a dif­fer­ent idea. They just sent me these plans to­day to make it like a round­about. "It has not been set ex­act­ly where it is sup­posed to be. "It might go back in the same spot, I don't know. It's to be a reg­u­la­tor of traf­fic in­stead of a hin­drance. That's what we want." Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) coun­cil­lor, An­tho­ny Gar­cia, said his par­ty's po­si­tion was that the Di­al should re­main ex­act­ly where it was.

"The sense of his­to­ry of the Di­al must be main­tained," he said. "lt is im­por­tant. We see the Di­al as not on­ly a clock, but as a mon­u­ment and land­mark that is syn­ony­mous with Ari­ma. "We know for a fact that the clock has been re­paired. We have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem in hav­ing the clock re­paired." Gar­cia said the ed­i­fice that was the Di­al meant so much to the peo­ple of Ari­ma and such a his­tor­i­cal mon­u­ment should nev­er be de­stroyed and should be main­tained. "The en­tire struc­ture was re­moved un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly with­out con­sul­ta­tion with any­one," he said. "It was done al­most like a thief in the night. That is what raised the ire of a lot of the burgess­es of Ari­ma. "The Di­al is so im­por­tant to Arim­i­ans in giv­ing di­rec­tions. It is al­ways used as a fo­cal point."