EVEN as Linden vendors bemoan the slow pace of business for the festive season, a veritable army of overseas-based persons who have come home on vacation have been flooding the market with their foreign products, crowding the central market arena with makeshift stalls and tents, displaying products ranging from dry goods to haberdashery to households items and clothing.
With many shoppers being lured by the smell of foreign products and the foreign accent of the vendors, the local vendors are left wondering if they have been abandoned by their regular customers, or whether Christmas has been postponed until next year.
When this newspaper visited the Mackenzie Market on Saturday, several stallholders were conducting business, and even though many of the local vendors had extended their stalls or set up additional stalls on the Amelia’s Ward bus park to access customers easier, some have regretted doing so, as it seems that their additional investments may not bring in the profits they had expected.
Many of these ‘foreign’ sellers were however seen conducting big business transactions, reaping the profits of Christmas. One local vendor looking on in dismay claimed that the situation is something that needs to be looked at by the authorities, as the same thing occurs during the Linden Town Week celebration.
“I think (it) is really unfair to we; because these foreigners coming in with five, six barrels with thing to sell, and they might selling a lil $400 or $500 less than we; and ya know how Guyanese foreign minded? So they gon shop from the foreigners and forget who they were shopping from all year,” the male vendor said.
However, one foreign vendor, Joycelyn, said it is not her intention to take business away from the local vendors.
“This is the business I doing all the time, not just (at) Christmas time. I does always send home stuff to sell; so is not like I making a money there and here too,” she explained as she hustled to tend to several customers.
Shonnette Seaforth, a variety store vendor, complaining of slow business, opined that Christmas would be bleak for her. “I don’t know if is because money ain’t circulating or the rain mek business so slow, but time like now last week I done clocking in a hundred and something-thousand dollars; now ya barely scraping a thirty.”
Other vendors blamed the slow business on the $25,000 bonus that was given to employees, as against last year’s $50,000. Calls were also made for the Mayor and Town Council to look into the activities of the ‘foreigners’, who randomly set up stalls without having to pay rates for them, while the local vendors are required to so do.
