Sascha Wil­son

An on­line pe­ti­tion to San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Regel­lo, to name the street lead­ing to San Fer­nan­do Hill in ho­n­our of Dr James Lee Wah, is not nec­es­sary, the may­or says.

The move by Chris­t­ian His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Ter­rence Hon­ore has left Re­grel­lo baf­fled, since ac­cord­ing to the may­or, he has al­ready agreed on it.

He said, “This is not nec­es­sary. I spoke to him, we had a dis­cus­sion. He asked me why we did not name the street by Na­pari­ma Bowl af­ter Lee Wah in­stead of Tor­rance Mo­hammed.”

How­ev­er, he said they agreed that the street lead­ing to San Fer­nan­do Hill was ap­pro­pri­ate to be named in Lee Wah’s ho­n­our be­cause he fought against quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at the hill.

Re­grel­lo said he asked Hon­ore to send him a pe­ti­tion with about 12 names re­quest­ing that the street be named af­ter Lee Wah and he re­ceived it on June 2.

“This is card­ed to be tabled be­fore the coun­cil next week Tues­day. And there are no res­i­dents liv­ing on that street so there will be no op­po­si­tion.”

He said last week when he saw the on­line pe­ti­tion, he con­tact­ed Hon­ore and asked him to take it down be­cause it was re­flect­ing bad­ly on the cor­po­ra­tion, es­pe­cial­ly since they had al­ready agreed to name the street af­ter Lee Wah.

“I want to dis­tance my­self from that. That is ir­re­spon­si­ble,” the may­or charged.

The on­line pe­ti­tion, which start­ed with a tar­get of 100 sig­na­tures but has been in­creased to 200, had gar­nered 101 sig­na­tures yes­ter­day.

The pe­ti­tion ask­ing for the street to be named af­ter Lee Wah not­ed that he had “suc­cess­ful­ly ad­vo­cat­ed against the de­struc­tion of the San Fer­nan­do Hill.”

“He al­so made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of Dra­ma and The­atre Arts in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He has left a lega­cy of or­gan­i­sa­tions and achieve­ments that have shaped the his­to­ry of our beloved city and the na­tion as a whole. Let’s ho­n­our his mem­o­ry,” it stat­ed.

The pe­ti­tion was signed by 14 peo­ple. Lee Wah, founder of the Na­tion­al Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, died on Ju­ly 4, 2020. He al­so co-found­ed and led sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the San Fer­nan­do Arts Coun­cil, San Fer­nan­do Dra­ma Guild and the Cre­ative Arts Coun­cil. Hon­ore could not be reached for com­ment on his cell­phone.