FOLLOWING a recently resolved dispute between the Georgetown Mayor & City Council and the Guyana Local Government Officers Union (GLGOU) which came after a three-day shutdown of the city’s major markets, a group purporting to be the vendors’ association has indicated a backlash of their own. Being the third party in the GLGOU/M&CC affair, vendors decried their losses after their places of work were shutdown for some 48 or so hours, until the Government’s intervention eased the situation.

“The impasse ‘has’ passed over, [and] they’ve come to an understanding. The markets have reopened, but while the vendors were not deliberately targeted, I think the vendors would have suffered losses,” according to Odo Best, President of the Movement of Civil Unions.
Best said he had been in contact with Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green even before the markets were shutdown but he told this publication that he “wasn’t very clear what was happening but it became very clear Monday after.”
On Monday, GLGOU President Dale Beresford had the onerous task of explaining to Stabroek Market vendors why their businesses would be closed for the coming days. Last week, during a press conference at the Mayor’s Office, Beresford threatened the shutdown of municipal buildings if the City Council did not approve five percent wages and salary increases for local government officers represented by his union.
His concern was that the Mayor & Councillors had placed a conditionality on the five percent approval. That conditionality was that similar increases would be given to the City’s Councillors, although that union does not represent the city’s elected councillors.
Beresford had told reporters that the increase of advances, allowances and increases for councillors are subject to approval by the Local Government Minister, according to provisions in the Municipal and District Councils Act, Cap 28:01.
These events caused the Ministry of Labour to intervene, urging the Council to summon an Extraordinary Meeting. At that extraordinary meeting the Council approved the wages and salary increases for officers represented by the GLGOU, resulting in the reopening of the markets today.
The shutdown during the Christmas season compounds losses vendors had already suffered from damage to goods when citizens of Georgetown woke up to a flooded city in early December.
MAY HOLD BACK RENT
Best is adamant that the M&CC owes the vendors an apology for the unwarranted economic losses. “They should issue an apology and they should find a way of giving back to the vendors and make them feel comfortable again.”
Failure to do so, according the Vendors’ Association President, would see vendors “holding back two consecutive months’ rents collectively… to let them [M&CC] know that they [vendors] have a punch of their own.” This is expected to begin in January after the Christmas season and will run until February.
He is confident this will work since “they [vendors] contribute to a large portion of the budgets of the Council so that whenever they are planning activities, they need to consider the vendors above it all and how it will affect them.”

(By Derwayne Wills)