CITY vendors on Friday flayed the Mayor and Town Clerk over the poor services being offered at a time when the city officials were canvassing their support for a number of developmental projects.“Get yall act together,” Maria Bailey told City Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green and the Town Clerk, Royston King, as she highlighted her many concerns before a large gathering during a Town Hall meeting at City Hall on Friday.

Bailey, who has been operating a stall in the Stabroek Bazaar for a number of years, said the Council has been paying keen attention to the operations of businesses along Regent and Robb Streets, but has failed miserably in attending to the needs of vendors in the Stabroek Bazaar. “If you come and see the condition in which we operate in the Bazaar…the place is in a mess…The pipe is in a gutter, the gutter clog up. The toilet was built since 1991 through SIMAP, and not a repair since,” Bailey lamented, while questioning when last the elected members of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council had visited the area, which is starving for attention. She said that despite failing to address many of the sanitation problems facing the vendors there, Market Revenue Collectors would religiously collect their fees, and failure to make timely payments would attract a late fee penalty.

“When I know this market, they use to come around every two hours with a wheelbarrow and clean up the place, nothing like that happens any more…In the afternoon you bag-off your garbage, the next day you come and reach it right there,” she complained.

Because of the insanitary conditions at the facility, there is now insect infestation. Bailey said Councillors need to address the concerns of all the people and not a collective few.

Conway Douglas, another vendor, commenting on the vending fees, said it would appear that the fees are on the increase when not much has been done for vendors. According to him, fees were quickly increased from $500 to a $1000 and then a third increase during the festive season of $500. He averages that vendors would pay approximately $50, 000 a year in vending fees.

“It is the very us that are asked to pay more to send our children to private schools if we want better for them. It is the very us that are asked to pay for parking meter. It is the very us who have to pay more for passport, more on light and electricity, and I am begging you people to be considerate,” Douglas pleaded.

The vendor reminded the City Mayor and the Town Clerk of the fact that many established businesses in the main commercial hub pay meagre taxes on an annual basis. Some of the taxes range from $1,200 to $12, 000 a year.

Turning his attention to the issues surrounding waste-disposal management, Douglas said it is ironic that the Council is claiming that it does not have the manpower to police defaulters, many of which are well established businesses, when it is partnering with Smart City Solutions to provide constables for the monitoring of parking spaces in the city. “These are the things you must consider when you call us friends, we are not stupid, we are powerless but we are not stupid,” he said.

Prior to Douglas’ statement, the City Mayor, Chase-Green and the Town Clerk had complained of the indiscriminate dumping of garbage which is a health hazard. The city officials had complained that the garbage receptacles provided to vendors are being used for the dumping of industrial waste.

Meanwhile, another vendor told the city officials that it is more than a year since the municipality had promised to rehabilitate the Stabroek wharf, which is in a dilapidated state, and nothing has been done to date. In response to the concerns raised, the City Mayor and Town Clerk committed to addressing many of the issues, in collaboration with the relevant authorities.

On the developmental front, the Town Clerk told the vendors the Georgetown Mayor and City Council will be carrying out a number of studies to determine the way forward on the construction of a new wing at the Stabroek Market. According to him, that project, about which the vendors along Water Street will soon be consulted, is being used as a pilot initiative, laying the foundation for other similar projects at the other Municipal Markets.

“We believe that there should be substantial investments by the Council, particularly in the Stabroek Market and at Bourda Market, some of the systems there have deteriorated to a state that we are not proud of and we are now in the process of making substantial investments to ensure that we repair and [carry out] development on those markets.”

Mayor Chase-Green, in her address to the people, said despite the many challenges facing the council, she will not buckle under pressure. “I am the fifth woman Mayor in the city of Georgetown and I have the strength and the stamina to stand up to my responsibilities and to take this city forward,” she said, while appealing for support, particularly from her women folk.