“It hurt me ah lot ya know because ya gun go at the back deh and people ain’t gun know you at the back deh. Business is very slow right now and I don’t know what we gun do,” a tearful Drupattie Arjune, 60, said as she watched her small, wooden stall, being ripped apart board by board yesterday morning.
Arjune, who has sold groceries along Saffon Street at La Penitence Market for over 12 years, was among the vendors who demolished their stalls yesterday to facilitate road work scheduled to start later this week.
Vendors were given up to yesterday to remove because work is expected to begin on Thursday. Some vendors staged a protest outside the Office of the President in the hope of getting a temporary reprieve and assistance in rebuilding their stalls in La Penitence Market.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Public Works identified the market vendors who will have to move in order for road work in the area to begin. The City Council’s Clerk of Markets also indentified the fish pond inside the market as a place to permanently house some 12 vendors.
There are over 50 vendors who sell along Saffon Street and for many like Arjune it is their sole source of income. “I depend on it and I didn’t expect something like this,” she told Stabroek News.
Arjune had inherited the stall from her sister, who married and moved to Berbice. “My husband die and she married and gone up Berbice and she say ‘man, tek it over,’” she recalled. She added, “Well, what ya gun do ya got to study? Because I lately do repairs during the World Cup. They say you gah do that, so I spend money, me ain’t get nobody to help me.”
Adding to her worries is the fact that she has to pay the men who she contracted to break down her stall as well as come up with money to rebuild inside the market. “Put me in you space, you know it hurting a lot,” she said. However, she did harbour some optimism, saying, “Ah hoping for the best that we can make it.”
The concern over where the money will come from to rebuild a stall inside the market is shared by other vendors.
‘Dead, dead’
Camilla Khan, 48, is a single mother who travels from Soesdyke to do business at the market. She estimated that it will cost her $80,000 to $100,000 to rebuild a stall inside the market. “I did tek money from IPED [the Institute for Private Enterprise Development] to stock the shop fuh the Christmas and I didn’t expect this would ah happen,” she said.
Further, Khan is worried about business inside the market since business outside is “really slow.” Khan operates a craft stall and she fears she will lose the customers she has cultivated over the five years she has been there. Watching the demolition of the stall she invested so much in was very hurtful, Khan said. “Sometimes I does just think about changing the business. Is like you ain’t going nowhere,” she added, noting that she still has to come up with money to start up a new business which puts her back where she started when it was announced that they had to demolish their stalls.
A few vendors yesterday took it upon themselves to demolish their own stalls in order to salvage the materials to use in the construction of their new stalls in the market. A vendor who owns a veterinary shop took friends to help him dismantle. “My structure is like 75% concrete. What I can save I save… it takes two weeks to put everything in place and that is if I have the money,” he said. “I’m not hearing the matter of compensation…we going for the development of the country. We have to move but how are we going to rebuild?”
Several other stalls were closed. According to the mother and daughter duo at Mohadeo’s, they did not demolish their stall because it falls just on the border of the line demarcating all the vendors that will have to move.
They have operated their snackette for some three years and the daughter said they were told that only half of their stall may need to be demolished. “They might just break the whole thing, we all waiting to see,” she added. The mother said that she took up the job to support her husband who was the only one working. They are worried that their business will suffer if they move inside the market. “The market is no good at all. It dead, dead, people hardly buy from out hey much less in deh.”
‘Some time’
Last year October, it was announced that Saffon Street will be made into a two-lane road as a measure of easing congestion from East Bank traffic. The street was previously a one way from 6 am to 6 pm. To accommodate this change, it was also announced that vendors along the street will have to be removed.
Meanwhile, the fate of the remaining vendors along Saffon Street remains in limbo and a handful yesterday took to peaceful protest outside the Office of the President in the hope of an intervention from the country’s leader. “We asking for some time. We know we got to move. They say that they need to develop the country. We accept that. We asking for some time and we need some sort of compensation,” said Adrian Kennedy. Kennedy said he has been vending at the market for over 16 years.
The small group had lacards in hand, reading “peaceful protest.” Vendor Anita Arjune said, “We want the president to help we, because if ya stall bruck up, we can’t afford to build it back and we selling there for years.”
Many of the vendors said they are not opposed to moving but they would like some time and compensation before they do. Following the announcement of the removal of vendors last year, vendors had submitted a proposal to the Mayor and City Council suggesting that they be placed on Sussex Street or on an empty lot at the corner of James and Saffon streets.
The City Council is still to come to a decision on where the vendors will be placed. According to Anita Arjune, “Only last week Tuesday they give we a notice. Anytime we have to remove.”
