COMMUTERS using Worthington Terrace in New Kingston may have to put up with the new one-way traffic system for at least another two months.

The Firearms Licensing Authority’s (FLA) head office is located on that road.

Peter Bunting, Minister of National Security, is unable to say whether the decision by the police to make the parochial roadway — which runs from Trafalgar Road to Worthington Avenue — a one-way is legal. But he insists that the FLA’s head office should be removed from the location by the end of May.

Bunting told Tuesday’s meeting of the House of Representatives’ Standing Finance Committee (SFC) at Gordon House, that while he sympathises with the complaints against the newly instituted one-way system, he recognises that the problem has only two more months to run.

“Believe me, no one has been more strident on representations on this issue than the Member of Parliament (Julian Robinson, MP for South East St Andrew),” he told the committee.

“We have heard his representations and we have insisted, and I can tell you that the relocation (of the FLA office) has actually commenced and we believe it will be completed by May. So this will shortly be a moot,” he added.

Bunting was responding to questions raised by former Mayor of Kingston and MP for West Kingston, Desmond McKenzie about problems for motorists using the road into and out of New Kingston, as well as residents, due to the new one-way system.

“These things that are happening on Worthington Terrace are unacceptable,” McKenzie told the SFC.

He accused the police of turning the side road into a one-way, although they have no authority to do so.

“That is the prerogative of the KSAC or the National Works Agency (NWA), and to compound matters they wrote the KSAC asking for permission to convert the road into a one-way and it was refused, but they went ahead and converted it and even put up illegal one-way signs,” McKenzie said.

He said that the change was creating serious problems for residents as well as outsiders using the road.

“It is not for me to determine the legality of the action, the courts will decide that,” Bunting said.

Auto sought the advice of one of the city’s main traffic experts, and was told that it is the residents who should decide these changes.

“It is a KSAC road and if they want to change its status they would have to meet with the residents and get the support of 80 per cent of them. It cannot be done without the the residents’s awareness of it, and in fact it is the residents who usually initiate such changes,” the source said.

However, he said that the police seem to have a different interpretation of the law, which was promoted by former head of the police traffic department, Senior Superintendent of Police Radcliffe Lewis, which is beeing carried on by his successor.