Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez says al­though he has tak­en him­self out of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process sur­round­ing the calls to re­move the con­tro­ver­sial Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue in the city, his coun­cil in­tends to be­gin a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion process of the Christo­pher Colum­bus Square.

Speak­ing at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing, Mar­tinez said the plan in­cludes re­mov­ing the fenc­ing from the square, in­stalling lights, bench­es and cre­at­ing an am­bi­ence for the res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain to en­joy.

Ear­li­er this year, there was a glob­al push to have stat­ues and mon­u­ments glo­ri­fy­ing col­o­niz­ers such as Colum­bus re­moved from pub­lic places. T&T had its own move­ment, led by the Warao peo­ple and the Cross Rhodes Freeport Project.

It was not the first time the group had called for the re­moval of Colum­bus’ mon­u­ment but on that oc­ca­sion, an on­line pe­ti­tion in sup­port of the re­moval gath­ered well over 10,000 sig­na­tures.

Mar­tinez, when pressed to say whether the city would take ac­tion to re­move the mon­u­ment, an­nounced at the June statu­to­ry meet­ing that the mon­u­ment did not fall un­der his ju­ris­dic­tion.

He said then the mat­ter was a na­tion­al one and he was with­draw­ing from it and await­ing a de­ci­sion from the Gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mar­tinez said the project should not cost the cor­po­ra­tion much, as he said they have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of do­ing more with less.

Mar­tinez said while Port-of-Spain has sev­er­al recre­ation­al spaces, most of those do not fall with­in the East Port-of-Spain dis­trict, where most of the city’s pop­u­la­tion lives.

He said the on­ly two spaces in East Port-of-Spain are Colum­bus Square-where the mon­u­ment to the man who start­ed one of the world’s worst geno­cide still stands - and Tamarind Square.

How­ev­er, Mar­tinez said both of those squares are fenced and locked at night, pre­vent­ing the city’s res­i­dents from en­joy­ing their beau­ty.

“I am talk­ing about the pos­si­ble re­moval of the fenc­ing around the squares and al­so to re­ha­bil­i­tate be­cause if you look at these squares, the trees need prun­ing, it needs some am­bi­ence, we need to light up the squares be­cause that part of Port-of-Spain is dark­er in the night and those are as­sets of the cor­po­ra­tion, we are go­ing to look at the open spaces that we have and al­low it to have the best use,” he said.

He said there are plans to in­stall bronze stat­ues at Tamarind Square in com­mem­o­ra­tion of Car­ni­val. “We want to be able to dis­play our cul­ture be­cause this is where Car­ni­val was born if you look through Port-of-Spain, you will see noth­ing that rep­re­sents Car­ni­val, we need to cel­e­brate the great­est show on earth,” he said. (SR)