Port-of-Spain Mayor sees coconut mafia

(Trinidad Guardian) Port-of-Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing is insisting there is no coconut vendors’ association, despite several releases being sent to the media signed by “Baldeo Babwah, president of the Coconut Vendors Association.” Lee Sing asked: “Where are their minutes, their constitution, their by-laws? Let us start there. I have asked for copies. There are none,” he added.

He said: “There is no Coconut Vendors Association. There is one family monopolising the sale of coconuts at the location (Queen’s Royal College by the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain) and I don’t intend for them to pull my strings.” Asked if there was a coconut mafia operating around the Savannah, he said: “You said it right. There are all kinds of mafia. There is a coconut mafia now.”

Lee Sing was responding to questions on a release sent by the Coconut Vendors Association yesterday informing of a meeting it would be having with the Port-of-Spain City Corporation at 10 am yesterday. In the release, Babwah said Lee Sing requested the meeting with the vendors. He noted last June the mayor imposed a TT$700 a month charge on the vendors and the corporation promised to put vending measures in place.

Babwah said Lee Sing said only four coconut carts would be allowed to operate along the Queen’s Royal College strip and two others near the US Embassy and the National Academy of the Performing Arts. “Since that meeting nothing has been done. No monies were paid, no regulations enforced. In fact, Lee Sing told one of my vendors to go ahead and make his money and continue selling in the van,” Babwah said.

The coconut vendors called on Local Government Minister Dr Suruj Rambachan to intervene if Lee Sing should try to discriminate against them at the meeting and invited the media to attend. All efforts to reach Babwah since Monday at the two cell numbers given on the release have been unsuccessful. Lee Sing admitted he asked the vendors to pay the corporation TT$700 a month and planned to restrict the number of carts to six.

He said: “The whole place is being turned into a marketplace. We can’t have the whole place with coconut carts.” The mayor then did a mathematics lesson. “I have asked for TT$700 a month. They sell coconuts 24/7. If they sell a coconut for TT$10 and they sell 100 a day, how much is that?” he asked.

“They sell four weeks a month, 32 weeks a year,” he added, indirectly asking to work out a coconut vendor’s yearly earnings. “Why shouldn’t he pay for real estate he is using free of charge?” the mayor asked. Lee Sing extended the maths lesson to the Charlotte Street vendors. “They pay TT$700 a month and only sell three days a week,” he noted, omitting to disclose how much they made in those three days.

He objected to the vendors informing the media that press conferences were being called at the mayor’s office. Saying he had called no press conference involving coconut vendors, Lee Sing admitted he did request the meeting with them yesterday to regularise and sort out the matter.