Hinds’ Sight with Dr. David Hinds – The humanity and dignity of the vendors

–their activity is not illegal

IT IS very unfortunate that some people have misinterpreted my support for the vendors in their standoff with the Georgetown City Council as support for lawlessness. There has always been a part of our national psyche that privileges law and order, especially when the government which we support is in office. That means that our ethnic communities take turns in their embrace of the use of state force.

Many of those who are today loud in their calls for the removal of the vendors from Stabroek Market Square were vehemently against such action when the PPP government was in office. I understand the origin of such inconsistency, and in some small way I am sympathetic to it, but I have great difficulty following that lead.

I applaud the efforts of the Government and the City Council to arrest the chaos that has developed in Georgetown and elsewhere in the country as a result of street vending. We all know how difficult it is to find space to walk around the city centre since the pavements and other walkways have been transformed into vending spaces. Then there is the filth and the crime, which have accumulated over time. Such a situation is unsustainable, and is injurious to the health and safety of all involved; but, above all, it paints a sorry picture of what Guyana has become: every man and woman for himself/herself in an environment of disregard for normal rules and decency.

The situation did not get to that point because the vendors are bad people. Street vending has always been part of our economic motion, but it escalated at a particular juncture in our recent history. I rather suspect that the overflow of street vending in Georgetown and elsewhere has its origins in the food shortages in the 1980s and the concomitant rise of “trading.” The mass retrenchment from Government service and the absence of a large private sector to absorb the retrenched workers also drove many people into vending.

The vendors are our fellow citizens, who have been putting bread on their tables while providing a valuable service to our country. I have heard the term “illegal vending” being carelessly thrown around, as if that is the root of the problem. For God’s sake, these are poor people who, in the absence of employment in the traditional economy, have become self-employed and have used the public space to ply their trade.

What is illegal about people trying to make a living in a world and a Government which do not care if they live or die? Their occupation of the public space may have been irregular, but not illegal. These people have not been constructing massive buildings in the middle of the city. Once we attach the term “illegal” to their activities, we instantly begin to criminalize them and their economic activities.

Have we taken into consideration how many doctors and lawyers, and nurses and artists, and mechanics and entrepreneurs and teachers have been thrown up by those vendors? We talk about crime at the Stabroek Square, but have we taken into consideration how many young people were saved from a life of crime because their parents were able to use the little money they make from vending on the streets to send them to school? I am not saying that some people were not selling drugs and using vending as a cover for doing bad things, but we are wrong to characterize all vendors in those terms.

I am appalled that those who were recently voted into office at both the national and municipal levels — with the goodwill and the votes of those very vendors — would be so insensitive to their humanity. We should not, in this day and age, try to solve a problem of overflowing street vending and poor people irregular occupation of the public space with the punitive use of law and order as our first line of action. We have to start with consideration for the dignity and humanity of those involved. Those vendors are endowed with the same humanity as the rest of us, many of whom were in the ranks of the poor just the other day.

I spend a lot of my time — whether in the media, in the classroom or in communities across the country — reasoning with ordinary people, so I know that they are open to reason even when they are not instantly in agreement with you. It was constant reasoning that got them out to the polls last May to vote for change. We had been reasoning with them when we were in opposition, why can’t we reason with them now that we have power? I am sure that if we sit down and reason with those vendors about the need to regularize their situation in the interest of all of us, they would understand, even if it’s not instantly.

I stand with the vendors because I believe they have not been treated with respect and dignity, and I am tired of those in authority — in all governments — always using the power given to them by the people to kick poor people around.

I stand with the vendors because their activities help the economy.

I stand with the vendors to make a statement to Guyana: that we are becoming inhuman, and we have to watch ourselves; cleanliness and order cannot come before humanity.

I stand with the vendors because my aunt who raised me sold fruits in Georgetown by the day and black pudding in Buxton by the night to help feed my siblings and me and to send us to school; she would today be cited for “illegal vending.” For me, this matter is more than political.

More of Dr. Hinds ‘writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics, and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com

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