Vendors soldiering on despite dangerous Stabroek stelling roof

House of cards: The ruins of a section of the roof of the Stabroek wharf

On Monday when Stabroek Business visited the area of the Stabroek Market Wharf where a section of the roof had collapsed more than a week earlier, flattening a few stalls in the process, other vendors were still trading in the shadow of the havoc, seemingly indifferent to the danger of the rotting roof raining down on them.

It is not a matter of if but when another section of the badly deteriorated roof would fall but you would have been unable to tell if you had chosen to judge from the seeming indifference of the remaining vendors who were simply getting on with their lives, some trading from what they felt to be somewhat safer vantage points and others removing ‘load’ from the small boats that had made their way across the Demerara River.

On the whole and even if you rule out the collapsed section, the roof is an eyesore, remediable only through extensive and costly repairs and renovation and the Municipality’s budget almost certainly does not allow for that. More than that the scene mirrors the manner in which small urban vendors have