PoS Mayor wants burgesses to be responsible

Port of Spain Mayor Joel Martinez is reaching out to his burgesses, asking them to be more responsible and take pride in their environment and throw litter in bins and not on the ground or in the city’s watercourses.

Asked about the flooding that took place in the city and environs after last Sunday’s heavy rains Martinez said: “In checking, the drains were clear of debris indicating the volume of water was just too much for the aged infrastructure.”

Questioned further as to what steps is the corporation going to take to avoid a recurrence with future voluminous heavy rains he said: “The City corporation is currently looking at the various flood alleviation proposals and is also in discussion with the Minister of Works to who has a proposal to start works shortly. It involves creating additional canals with a pump system to release the build up of excess water as the current infrastructure is not adequate to remove large volumes of water deposited on a short time frame.”

With respect to an education programme for residents and business people alike about keeping their surroundings clean, the Mayor said: “We do not have a programme in place to educate the burgesses of the city to properly dispose of their garbage but we do have a programme to remove and dispose of garbage when properly deposited for pick up.”

He added: “We also embarked on a cleanup campaign using the system of volunteerism in January 2018 and extended the campaign asking corporate PoS to team up with the city to place bins throughout the city and we are close to rolling out that process.”