Chaos sends businesses packing

He said, “The fact is that the congestion, the chaos and the hazards created, the inconvenience, has caused more than half of the businesses there” to leave. He added, “And you can also see the changing landscape of Charlotte Street, which is now becoming a casino city on Charlotte Street.” Aboud said it was “plainly obvious” that Port-of Spain was not designed for a lot of the activity which is now taking place in the capital city.

Referring to the vendors who sell on Charlotte Street, he said “we need these persons who are occupying spaces that make it inconvenient for shoppers, for drivers and for deliveries to recognise that they have a part to play in saving their capital city and the interest of a 100, or 200 or 300 persons needs to be balanced with the interests of an entire city. So that in that discussion, we cannot allow emotion and the mischaracterisation of the issue as one of big versus small to overpower the logic of the discussion which is that the interests of Portof- Spain is paramount to the interests of any one stakeholder.” He told Newsday, “And you can try, yourself, to understand what it would be like to have a business there and to try and have a delivery made and what a distributor has to go through to get his deliveries made and to understand how difficult and congested this has become.” He said the situation needs “desperate attention.”