Kali­fa Clyne

Port-of-Spain may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee yes­ter­day an­nounced a crack­down on il­le­gal vend­ing in the city.At a press con­fer­ence at City Hall, Tim Kee said at present vend­ing was on­ly le­gal to li­censed ven­dors on Char­lotte Street and all oth­er ven­dors would be re­moved.Vend­ing in the city takes place on most of the ma­jor streets, in­clud­ing Fred­er­ick, Queen and Hen­ry Streets.In an in­ter­view af­ter the may­or's an­nounce­ment sev­er­al ven­dors in Port-of-Spain said they were not sur­prised at his de­ci­sion.

"They al­ways threat­ened to move us," said one el­der­ly woman."Well when they tell me to move I will move," she added.Asked if she had at­tempt­ed to get a li­cence to sell legal­ly, she said she ap­plied ten years ago but was told that li­cences were not avail­able.One young woman sell­ing watch­es on Fred­er­ick Street was con­fused."How can they do that? This is my on­ly source of in­come. I have two chil­dren to feed and this is how I feed them. Where are they go­ing to put us?" she asked.

Ac­cord­ing to Tim Kee, reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of vend­ing in the city meant the cor­po­ra­tion would now en­sure that arrange­ments made in the past were ad­hered to."The Char­lotte Street ven­dors were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vend un­der cer­tain con­di­tions. We will no­ti­fy the ven­dors that un­less these con­di­tions are met they will not be al­lowed to sell their items," Tim Kee said.One of the con­di­tions re­ferred to ven­dors stay­ing with­in the space al­lot­ed to them by the cor­po­ra­tion.

"The city is crowd­ed with ven­dors on every cor­ner. That will be a thing of the past," Tim Kee said.Ven­dors still pop­u­late the city sell­ing a va­ri­ety of mer­chan­dise on the streets.Though Tim Kee said there had been dis­cus­sions with ven­dors, Ray­mond Fran­cis, who has sold leather belts on Hen­ry Street for 22 years said no dis­cus­sion had tak­en place."This is un­fair. He can't just come and stop me. I have been here 22 years.

"If he wants us to pay for a li­cence that would be some­thing dif­fer­ent but to say we can't vend and we have to go and that is the end of the sto­ry, that is not right."I am a cit­i­zen of this coun­try too. How can he do that?" Fran­cis asked.With Tim Kee's plan, ven­dors who have not al­ready ap­plied for li­cences would not be able to ap­ply.He said the list for ap­pli­ca­tions was full, so even if new ven­dors want­ed to ap­ply they would not be able to get li­cences.

Tim Kee's plans

The may­or in­tends to re­move most of the ven­dors from the city streets, leav­ing on­ly snack ven­dors sell­ing items such as nuts, dou­bles and pies on streets oth­er than Char­lotte Street.These ven­dors, how­ev­er, would need to be mo­bile and not stay in one par­tic­u­lar spot.The may­or said the cor­po­ra­tion in­tend­ed to de­sign carts for those ven­dors and en­sure they wore a shirt iden­ti­fy­ing them as le­gal ven­dors.

Pie ven­dors would not be al­lowed to re­main on the street for more than three hours, Tim Kee said, ex­plain­ing that the city health of­fi­cer had said that was the shelf life for pies."No­body will be al­lowed to just put some­thing to­geth­er and come in­to the city and vend," he said.Tim Kee is at­tempt­ing a feat pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed by for­mer may­ors Louis Lee Sing in 2010 and Murchi­son Brown in 2006.