Mayor Raises Concerns After Massive Medical Outreach Causes Traffic Gridlock in Diego Martin

May­or of the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er is rais­ing con­cerns over se­vere traf­fic dis­rup­tion and in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing caused by a large-scale med­ical out­reach ini­tia­tive in Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day.

The ini­tia­tive, spear­head­ed by Hands In­ter­na­tion­al in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Com­mu­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists, at­tract­ed hun­dreds of pa­tients seek­ing cataract pro­ce­dures and oth­er med­ical ser­vices, re­sult­ing in heavy con­ges­tion along the West­ern Main Road and sec­tions of the Diego Mar­tin High­way for sev­er­al hours.

While com­mend­ing the or­gan­is­ers for pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal health­care as­sis­tance to mem­bers of the pub­lic, Glas­gow-Warn­er said the ab­sence of prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion and traf­fic co­or­di­na­tion cre­at­ed ma­jor chal­lenges for res­i­dents and mo­torists through­out the re­gion.

“Ini­tia­tives geared to­ward im­prov­ing the health and well-be­ing of cit­i­zens are al­ways wel­comed and ap­pre­ci­at­ed,” the may­or stat­ed. “How­ev­er, to­day’s ac­tiv­i­ty re­sult­ed in se­vere traf­fic con­ges­tion and ma­jor park­ing is­sues through­out the Diego Mar­tin re­gion, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion to res­i­dents and mo­torists for sev­er­al hours.”

Ac­cord­ing to Glas­gow-Warn­er, pre­vi­ous large-scale ac­tiv­i­ties host­ed by the hos­pi­tal with­in the bor­ough were typ­i­cal­ly co­or­di­nat­ed with the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, al­low­ing arrange­ments to be made for park­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions and shut­tle ser­vices.

How­ev­er, she said the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived no pri­or cor­re­spon­dence re­gard­ing yes­ter­day’s event or the an­tic­i­pat­ed vol­ume of at­ten­dees.

Fol­low­ing the dis­rup­tion, dis­cus­sions were held be­tween the may­or, Hans Des Vi­gnes and Mar­cia V. Marslin re­gard­ing mea­sures to pre­vent a re­cur­rence.

Marslin re­port­ed­ly con­tact­ed Hands In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Project Man­ag­er, Samuel Sankar be­fore Glas­gow-Warn­er al­so en­gaged him di­rect­ly on pos­si­ble traf­fic and park­ing so­lu­tions mov­ing for­ward.

The may­or said the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion again of­fered to make its car park fa­cil­i­ties avail­able for pa­tient park­ing, while rec­om­mend­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of shut­tle trans­porta­tion and struc­tured traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems.

Sankar re­port­ed­ly re­spond­ed by as­sur­ing of­fi­cials that the nec­es­sary sys­tems would be put in place “for the ease and com­fort of our burgess­es and cit­i­zens of our coun­try.”

How­ev­er, Glas­gow-Warn­er said that as of 5.50 pm yes­ter­day, no fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion had been re­ceived re­gard­ing what mea­sures would be im­ple­ment­ed, whether the Bor­ough’s park­ing fa­cil­i­ties would be utilised, or which au­thor­i­ties would over­see traf­fic co­or­di­na­tion.

“I must ex­press my dis­ap­point­ment re­gard­ing the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and clar­i­ty on this mat­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the lev­el of dis­rup­tion ex­pe­ri­enced by res­i­dents and mo­torists to­day,” she said.

The may­or al­so called on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Traf­fic War­dens Di­vi­sion to re­main on alert re­gard­ing road­way park­ing vi­o­la­tions and traf­fic is­sues stem­ming from the out­reach ex­er­cise.

Glas­gow-Warn­er stressed that the Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­mained will­ing to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with all stake­hold­ers to en­sure cit­i­zens con­tin­ue ben­e­fit­ing from the med­ical ini­tia­tive while min­i­miz­ing dis­rup­tion to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.