As the country desperately searches for an alternative to the PP government, the actions by the PNM-controlled San Juan Laventiile Regional Corporation, with respect to the part-time vendors in the San Juan market, do not leave much hope for us, if the PNM were to regain office.
It was heart-wrenching, on Sunday (morning) February 1, to see vendors, (parents, grandparents and great grandparents) with whom I have interacted for over 20 years, reduced to overnight criminals by the San Juan Laventille Regional Corporation.
The construction of the San Juan market was almost seven or eight years in the making and its completion was a time-bomb waiting to go off.
One can understand the need to house full time vendors in the new facility but many of the part-time vendors also do this as their main source of income.
How can the PNM-controlled San Juan Laventille Regional Corporation say that street vending is illegal when its counterpart, the PNM-controlled Port-of-Spain City Corporation, has an agreement for vendors to sell from Thursdays to Sundays on Charlotte Street?
If street vending is illegal why did the San Juan Laventille Regional Corporation continue to take rent money from the part-time vendors all these years?
Is this what we can expect from a PNM government?
I am sure that the members of the SJLRC know that in so-called developed countries, certain streets are blocked off on weekends to facilitate vending!
Is it so difficult to facilitate the part-time vendors on a Saturday and Sunday from 5 am to noon? Maybe, some consultation with the residents who may be affected by this should lead to a reasonable agreement.
Please let good sense prevail.
Linus F Didier,
Mt Hope.