Kali­fa Clyne

Project Sal­va­tori 2011/2012, the tem­po­rary vend­ing area at the for­mer Sal­va­tori store lo­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain was launched yes­ter­day with po­lice of­fi­cers pa­trolling the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade op­po­site the site with a he­li­copter comb­ing the area.

This was the scene as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took a whirl­wind ten-minute tour of the stalls along with Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee-Sing, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Jer­lean John.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar dropped in on the few stalls al­ready set-up with a quick word for each ven­dor be­fore mak­ing a quick ex­it.

Dur­ing the brief pro­ceed­ings, Lee-Sing took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to urge Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma to re­lease the Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion's un­spent bal­ances to pro­vide a per­ma­nent home to ven­dors.He said in a meet­ing with Mooni­lal last week­end he had stressed the need to con­vince Shar­ma to re­lease the funds to­talling $4 mil­lion.

"Next year this fa­cil­i­ty may not be avail­able to you," said Lee-Sing, adding that the prop­er­ty was valu­able re­al es­tate.He said, how­ev­er, he hoped the ven­dors could be a part of the pedes­tri­an malls to be lo­cat­ed at Hen­ry and Char­lotte Streets.The ven­dors have been grant­ed un­til Ash Wednes­day to oc­cu­py the premis­es and Lee Sing warned them against seek­ing ex­ten­sions.

"There will be no ex­ten­sions, ven­dors. Do you un­der­stand?" he asked.They replied with a re­sound­ing 'yes'.He al­so ad­vised them to think out­side the box when try­ing to sell their wares."Try to avoid shan­ty town ap­pear­ances. The first thing peo­ple will say is the may­or run­ning a shan­ty town in the city," said Lee-Sing.Mooni­lal al­so ad­dressed ven­dors telling them that dis­cus­sions con­cern­ing use of the com­pound would lead to an out­come that both ven­dors and the city could be hap­py with.

"We sup­port the ven­dors 100 per cent and un­der­stand their need to earn a liv­ing for the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val," said Mooni­lal.He told ven­dors he would like to re­turn to the vend­ing site in a few weeks with his straw bas­ket to make a few pur­chas­es.