Beginning yesterday, vendors who ply their trade along the Merriman Mall will have to pay $1,500 per day to the city to continue to do so.
The charge is five times what they had been paying.
According to Town Clerk Royston King and Clerk of Markets Sherlock Lovell, the increase is to allow the continued provision of several new amenities.
“We are providing lights, water, security, shade and garbage disposal,” Lovell explained. King also noted that it is the administration’s intention to also provide a garbage compactor.
While City Hall believes that these improved services warrant the present increase, the vendors disagree.
Speaking with Stabroek News on Wednesday, one vendor, who did not want to be named, explained that at a meeting on Monday they were informed by the Town Clerk and Clerk of Markets of the increase, which is being imposed in spite of their objections.
“We tried to negotiate with them to lower it but they said they already lower it to that amount and they can’t lower it anymore,” she said, while adding that the vendors were finally forced to accept the amount.
She is also dissatisfied with the size of the space they are being allotted.
“Is a lil small space, a one pallet space they asking for all that money for,” she said.
Over the last four months, City Hall has held various conflicting positions on the future of the more than 30 vendors who operate along Merriman Mall, between Cummings Street and Orange Walk.
In November, the Mayor and City Council asked those wholesalers who plied their trade in the area to move east and operate at what was once the “skating rink” to facilitate the creation of a car park to ease congestion in the city.
In January, the municipality announced that it had temporarily suspended vending operations along that strip and issued vendors a one-week deadline to get themselves in order.
It had said that the suspension was as a direct result of the Council’s observation that the area is very untidy, which is inconsistent with its vision to make Georgetown clean and green.
Two days later, King told reporters that vending in the area would be permanently ended as the city “wants to give back this particular facility to the young people.” The entire strip between Cummings Street and Orange Walk, he had said, would be reserved for “cultural and social uses, such as open air concerts and sporting activities.”
When vendors turned up to sell on January 6, they found themselves barred from the site, with barricades manned by city police in place.
After protest by the displaced vendors and a statement from the president which said vendors must be provided with suitable spaces to operate while the City Council must also be able to enforce the city’s by-laws, King said that vendors would be allowed to resume selling in two weeks, on the condition that their operations are clean and environmentally-friendly. He remarked that his previous statement about calling a permanent halt to vending should’ve clarified that the halt to vending would be for vendors who were not environmentally-friendly and not complying with the regulations in place to ensure the development of a green city.
At that time, King announced that the vendors who had been temporarily relocated to the stretch of mall between Light and Cummings streets could resume vending on January 20. They were to resume vending in that area yesterday. In the two months since they were moved, the city has constructed several covered narrow stalls, which the vendors have begun referring to as the horse stables.
