Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Dis­ap­point­ed by poor sales, San Fer­nan­do ven­dors made an emo­tion­al ap­peal to new­ly ap­point­ed May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo to be al­lowed to ply their trades on the streets dur­ing the busy hol­i­day sea­son.

Michael Sylvester, a ven­dor on High Street, San Fer­nan­do ,saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring his con­cerns di­rect­ly to the head when he saw Re­grel­lo and for­mer May­or, now Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, walk­ing down the street.

"The ven­dors don't mind con­tribut­ing to­wards the (re­gion­al) cor­po­ra­tion, but with a per­mit and a per­ma­nent spot.

"It's not nice to be run­ning from the po­lice every day," Sylvester said.

"It hurts my heart when I see po­lice seiz­ing peo­ple's goods and they have to end up be­fore the courts... no­body wants that for them­selves."

Ho­sein in­ter­ject­ed say­ing: "You know I led the coun­cil for the past three years, I nev­er pres­sured you all about vend­ing on the streets."

Shak­ing Ho­sein's hand, Sylvester re­spond­ed: "A lot of oth­er may­ors pass and it's pres­sure for the small man–you and Mr Re­grel­lo were the on­ly ones."

Seek­ing to al­le­vi­ate the fears of the ven­dors, Re­grel­lo told them: "We will meet af­ter the hol­i­days, around the sec­ond week in Jan­u­ary, to dis­cuss this prop­er­ly.

"We need to come up with a pol­i­cy that will pre­vent us from hav­ing this dis­cus­sion a week from Christ­mas next year."

An­oth­er ven­dor, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Alyson, said this is the worst year of sales she has ex­pe­ri­enced since she start­ed sell­ing cur­tain rods in front of a pop­u­lar fab­ric store on High Street.

"Every day peo­ple are say­ing things will pick up but peo­ple have to know how they are spend­ing their mon­ey in this re­ces­sion," she said.

"Re­ces­sion is on­ly af­fect­ing the poor peo­ple, why these big gov­ern­ment min­is­ters don't take a cut in their salaries?

"On­ly poor peo­ple suf­fer­ing."