Georgetown transforming?

Vending outside Bourda Market recently

No longer hamstrung by the burden of having been in office for more than two decades without having to face the electorate, City Hall is going about the business of fashioning the city in its image and likeness with a renewed assertiveness. Having won generous plaudits from the citizenry for its attempts to clean up Georgetown ahead of the ‘invasion’ of visitors from the diaspora for the jubilee independence celebrations, the municipality appears to have seized upon the high marks it has been given to go further.

But for the distinctive architecture of the Stabroek Market in the background one might almost be tempted to think that this picture was taken in another country.
But for the distinctive architecture of the Stabroek Market in the background one might almost be tempted to think that this picture was taken in another country.

Prior to this year’s local government elections the council had engaged in a protracted confrontation to transform the image of Bourda Market, mostly by reconfiguring the vending regime at Merriman Mall and repositioning the vendors who, for years, had ‘dropped anchor’ on Bourda Street in the shadow of the dilapidated and dangerous former Bedford School. The vendors, predictably, had, for a while, resisted the