Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth – After years of missed deadlines, the St Elizabeth Parish Council believes it is close to compelling taxi operators to park their vehicles in a designated transport centre rather than on the streets and sidewalks of this crowded town.

“We are now very, very close to having the police empowered to act,” Mayor of Black River and chairman of the St Elizabeth Parish Council Everton Fisher told the Jamaica Observer Central on Saturday.

This followed a report at the last monthly meeting of the parish council that the gazetted document, which will give legal authority for the police to act, was at the printery.

“The gazetted matter is with the Jamaica Printing Office,” Secretary/Manager of the St Elizabeth Parish Council David Gardner told the council in Black River.

The St Elizabeth police have complained over the years that the delay by the Jamaican Parliament to officially gazette the order for west-bound taxi operators to use the parking area at the town’s western end, south of the Santa Cruz market and opposite the Scotia Bank on Main Street, has left them powerless.

Head of police anti-crime operations in St Elizabeth, Deputy Superintendent Lanford Salmon told Observer Central earlier this year that the situation posed a challenge to law and order in Santa Cruz.

“As you know, criminals thrive on congestion,” Salmon said at the time. “So what we have here is a matter of public order and we hope the authorities move with great despatch to provide the legal authority so that transport operators can be compelled to stop parking on the street and go to their designated area,” he said.

The designated public passenger parking area was built following a massive fire which destroyed a ramshackle vendors’ arcade there. The burnt-out vendors were subsequently located north of the market building.

— Garfield Myers