By Jeff Trotman
Vendors of the Mackenzie Municipal Market have been commended for their vigilance in stopping worm infested wood from being used in the recent $11M rehabilitation of the market.
“If there wasn’t this level of vigilance, you would have ended up with a situation whereby, having waited all these years for the maintenance work to be done and then now when the work is being done, you’re getting substandard work, quality of material and all of that,” Linden IMC Chairman Orrin Gordon told journalists on January 2nd.
Rehabilitation of the Mackenzie Municipal Market was part of an agreement between the Ministry of Local Govern-ment and USAID in March 2014. The agreement covered rehabilitation of five other municipal markets in the country. The repairs covered the Constabulary Office, Revenue Clerks’ Office, stalls, storeroom, construction of a new fence, the existing washroom and construction of a new sanitary block. The project also seeks to reduce the amount of garbage entering the public space as these markets will have solid waste management facilities.
Gordon said the initial set of wood that the contractor intended to use was worm infested and the vendors complained to the municipality, who in-formed the Ministry of Local Government and the wood had to be changed. “So, I want to commend and congratulate the vendors for the vigilance that they exercised,” he said, adding that he did not have a problem that the contractor was not from Linden.
He also disclosed that the Linden Town Council has proposed to use about four large bins around the market and that it has asked the Region Ten Administration to decommission the garbage area at the front of the market after the Council had given permission for a shop to be built in the vicinity of the garbage area.
Gordon also said the Local Government Ministry had promised to supply garbage bins as part of the Clean Up My Country Campaign and that the Council has distributed fifteen bins to food, vegetable, grocery and meat vendors in the market. “Those bins have wheels and they are supposed to be bringing the bins to the front. So, we should not have had that bin next to the shoemakers,” Gordon said, adding that the market clerk is responsible for seeing that the bins are utilized.
The Linden IMC Chairman also expressed awareness that businesses, including restaurants that do not operate in the market, contribute to the pile up of solid waste in the vicinity of the shoemakers’ area. He is also aware that the toilet facilities in the market are generally underutilized but that on weekends and holidays many, people who lime on the Wisroc/Amelia’s Ward Bus Park choose to urinate and, even, defecate in the vicinity of the shoemakers’ stalls. He said a new sanitary block was being built in the very area but the market vendors objected to it.
According to him, the issue of garbage and sanitation around the market poses interesting questions that relate to the challenges of development in that people complain that they do not have sanitary facilities on the wharf but when effort is made to place alternative facilities closer to them, other people complain that they are being inconvenienced by such facilities. “It’s a problem,” Gordon declared.
He noted that some vendors are paying rent for their stalls but they are using them as storerooms. “The law says the stalls have to be opened,” Gordon said. “So, I am not so happy that yes, we’re collecting revenue for the stalls and the stalls are being locked up. So, for me, from a legal and technical standpoint, those stalls should be opened.”
