— after starting the process two years ago

AFTER two years, the administrative arm of the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is still waiting on the Markets and Public Health Committee to create a policy for street vending in the city.

Town Clerk Royston King had in the past lamented the fact 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 takes a decision.
“It is not easy at all to do a policy document,” Deputy Mayor and Chairman of the said committee, Mr. Lionel Jaikarran, told the statutory meeting last Monday.

While the committee benefitted from a policy outlined by Mayor Patricia Chase-Green, Jaikarran suggested 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 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 should be more effective and equipped with people who have ability, capacity and a willingness to work.
Councillor Andrea 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.
“I am not hearing from the [committee] and I hope that we can start consultations with those persons, so that they will be able to give us ideas of where they can be relocated while the wharf is being constructed,” she said last year June.