Zahra Gor­don

Dur­ing a tour of the Pe­nal Mar­ket on Tues­day, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan came out in sup­port of Pe­nal Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Prem­c­hand Sookoo and coun­cil­lor Shan­ti Boodram. Ram­bachan came to their de­fence af­ter they were ac­cused of ne­glect by Pe­nal mar­ket ven­dors. The min­is­ter said work was be­ing done to im­prove the mar­ket and that his pres­ence was ev­i­dence of Gov­ern­ment's con­cern.

"The coun­cil recog­nised that the fa­cil­i­ties need­ed to be ren­o­vat­ed and this is why we are vis­it­ing to­day be­cause all the fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing up­grad­ed," said Ram­bachan. Some ven­dors com­plained about a lack of prop­er toi­let fa­cil­i­ties at the mar­ket and claimed that night watch­men were steal­ing their pro­duce. Ram­bachan said if the claims were true, the cor­po­ra­tion should launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

Both Sookoo and Ram­bachan point­ed to the con­struc­tion of new fa­cil­i­ties cur­rent­ly tak­ing place say­ing the ven­dors were on­ly tem­porar­i­ly be­ing in­con­ve­nienced. Gov­ern­ment is spend­ing near­ly $56 mil­lion to im­prove mar­kets in Siparia and Pe­nal. The new Siparia Mar­ket, on SS Erin Road is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50 mil­lion, while up­grades to the Pe­nal mar­ket are cost­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6 mil­lion.

These ex­pen­di­tures were re­vealed dur­ing a tour of both fa­cil­i­ties by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan. The project man­ag­er for the Siparia Mar­ket, Clay­ton Ram­pat, said the four-storey mar­ket build­ing is 29 per cent com­plete. The foun­da­tion has been laid and steel beams for the struc­ture have been erect­ed.

Fea­tures of the mar­ket in­clude el­e­va­tors, air-con­di­tioned ar­eas for meat and fish ven­dors, cus­tomer park­ing, a can­teen and con­fer­ence room. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 170 ven­dors will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the build­ing when com­plet­ed. Ram­bachan said the Gov­ern­ment was up­grad­ing mar­kets around the coun­try to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.