–but City Hall still dithering on relocating vendors

GEORGETOWN Mayor Patricia Chase-Green has lamented recently that there are still some vendors who are living on the streets, “doing everything possible in the drains.”
“They got friends at City Hall,” responded APNU (A Partnership for National Unity)Councillor, Andrea Marks.

The Mayor, at the statutory meeting earlier this week, said the City Council will not permit vendors to live on the streets. “They are bathing and doing everything on site; everything possible in the drains,” she said.

Town Clerk Royston King said the administration is still awaiting a policy decision from the Markets Public Health Committee, which would regulate street vending in Georgetown.
Noting that the current situation is getting out of control, King said: “We’re asking Council to allow administration to do its work by submitting that policy,” he said.

After two years, the administration is still waiting on the said committee for that policy, and King has time and again lamented that while the committee fails to come forward with the policy and with suggestions for relocating vendors to facilitate certain projects, the administration is severely criticised each time it moves to take a decision.
But outgoing Deputy Mayor Lionel Jaikarran, who is heading the Markets Committee, offered recently that it is not easy to do a policy document.

While the committee benefitted from a policy outline from the mayor, Jaikarran said that it’s a lack of cooperation from the town clerk which is holding up the process of relocating vendors so that the Stabroek Market wharf can be repaired.

But King pointed out that the street vending policy is not to be confused with the repairs of the Stabroek wharf.

Jaikarran said the town clerk should cooperate some more with the committee to identify available spots for the relocation.

“We shouldn’t shift our responsibilities. It is the duty and responsibility of the committee to walk through the streets and identify such spots. It is not fair to throw it on the administration,” responded the mayor.

She noted that if the councillors continue to depend on the administration, then they will not be acting independently.

King said there are several activities which hinge on the creation of the street vending policy. He observed that while there has been no vending at the Stabroek Market Square, there has been “a slow but steady” increase of vendors on the parameters of the 1763 Monument, popularly known as the Cuffy Monument.

Councillor Welton Clarke suggested that the committee be more effective and equipped with people who have the ability, capacity and a willingness to work.
Councillor Marks made it known that she has already suggested seven possible spots where the vendors can be relocated.

Meanwhile, the Public Infrastructure Ministry has indicated that it will be starting works on the Stabroek Market wharf before the end of this year’s first quarter, and the mayor has for the longest while been lamenting the “lackadaisical” attitude with which the Markets Committee has been approaching the relocation of the vendors.