Rowley hits stink city

No one is entitled to live rough, he told yesterday’s swearing-in ceremony for aldermen at City Hall. “The whole question of street-dwellers in the city...no one has a right, an entitlement to live on the street, on the pavement,” Rowley said. “Those people who are on the street with no place to go ought to be made to go into those shelters.

If you don’t do that you end up with a situation like Chacon Street which at five o’clock every morning is an open sewer! It is one thing to talk about investment in the city and to do this and to do that, but if you turn a blind eye to some of the happenings in the city, there is no improvement in the quality of the city.” Rowley warned of a potential squatting sprawl at Queen’s Park Savannah. “As I speak to you now there is one person who is constructing and who is living permanently in Queens Park Savannah,” Rowley said. “And if you don’t do anything about it soon, by the time the next function of the city, you might be approached by ‘The Association of Queen’s Park Savannah Dwellers’. He explained why that person might be emulated by onlookers.

“When you allow something to happen or not to happen, other are looking on to see what is going to happen, and if nothing happens then you create a new aspect of our culture.” Rowley warned against undue sympathy for the Savannah dweller, saying, “And of course our culture is a culture (of) ‘How you could do the man that? Where’s the man going to live?” Warning the council of the hazard of relenting to such sentiments, he said, “And when you do that, you lead to a general deterioration and at the end of your term you’d have survived three years and you’d have made no improvement to the quality of life of the City of Portof- Spain.” He urged the council to have a vision for the city amid his proposed local government reforms, which can guide other corporations on how to boost residents’ quality of life.