Busi­ness­es in the cap­i­tal city, Port of Spain, may soon find them­selves pay­ing to have their com­mer­cial garbage re­moved, if May­or Joel Mar­tinez has his way.

Speak­ing on The Morn­ing Brew on CNC3 to­day, May­or Mar­tinez re­vealed that steps are be­ing tak­en to en­sure that busi­ness own­ers take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for waste com­ing from their es­tab­lish­ments.

“We have a lot of garbage that is put out by busi­ness­es,” he ex­plains. “Ac­tu­al­ly, they should be pay­ing to pick up their com­mer­cial garbage; on­ly some busi­ness­es ac­tu­al­ly do this.”

“We are go­ing to adopt a pro­gramme short­ly where we will charge busi­ness­es for ad­di­tion­al garbage be­yond the nor­mal amount. That will help us to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue to be able to have more trucks and per­son­nel look­ing af­ter the clean­li­ness of the city,” he re­vealed.

The Port of Spain May­or told us keep­ing the cap­i­tal city clean re­quires a team ef­fort. 

He ad­mit­ted that fi­nan­cial con­straints, as well as ap­provals from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Fire Ser­vices, have con­tributed to the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty with which the city streets are washed.

“We would to wash down the streets every sin­gle day,” he says. “We have the man­pow­er to do it, and the equip­ment like pow­er wash­ers, and so on. At some stage, we had a process where we were do­ing it at 4 to 5 o’clock in the morn­ing.”

He added: “Up to re­cent­ly, there were pho­tos of street wash­ing in St James. But it is not done as reg­u­lar­ly as we would like. Some­times, the ap­provals from WASA take a while.”

Ear­li­er this week, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans to re­vi­talise the cap­i­tal city, with san­i­ta­tion is­sues be­ing a ma­jor con­cern in those ef­forts.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the new Mas­ter Plan to Re­vi­talise the City of Port of Spain, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley point­ed to a few of the short term goals, name­ly clean­ing the city, in­creas­ing the pres­ence of po­lice, re­mov­ing the home­less from the streets and im­prov­ing light­ing.

Oth­er goals in­clude the Memo­r­i­al Park Plaza de­vel­op­ment, the Sal­va­tori Site and the cre­ation of a green space at the Fore­shore.