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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Savannah vendors threaten court action after order to vacate

by

262 days ago
20241102
Association of Local Culinary Ambassadors president Michael Williams, left, and The Grill Boys manager Sheldon Marcano during an interview yesterday.

Association of Local Culinary Ambassadors president Michael Williams, left, and The Grill Boys manager Sheldon Marcano during an interview yesterday.

JENSEN LAVENDE

Ven­dors at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, are will­ing to take the Gov­ern­ment to court af­ter they were or­dered to va­cate the area to al­low prepa­ra­tion for the Memo­r­i­al Day pro­ces­sion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Culi­nary Am­bas­sadors (AL­CA) Michael Williams said the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture wrote him on Oc­to­ber 22 re­quest­ing that he and his 62 mem­bers leave from mid­night to­mor­row to 4.30 pm on No­vem­ber 10.

The two-page let­ter said the ven­dors need­ed to va­cate the area for prepa­ra­tions for the Memo­r­i­al Day pro­ces­sion on No­vem­ber 10 to take place.

Williams de­scribed the re­quest as “po­lit­i­cal bul­ly­ing” and vowed not to ad­here to it.

“As pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, I am not go­ing to car­ry out this kind of wicked, vin­dic­tive or­der for no ap­par­ent rea­son. You want to lay some wreaths for some dead men who dead 100 years ago. I re­spect the fact that you want to have a cer­e­mo­ny for them, all re­spect to that but don’t op­press the liv­ing to ho­n­our the dead.”

Williams said in the past he and the ven­dors glad­ly va­cat­ed the area the day be­fore Memo­r­i­al Day, even pow­er wash­ing the area at their own cost. He said the week­long or­der is non­sen­si­cal as the ven­dors op­er­ate af­ter 5.30 pm and the pro­posed prac­tice will take place dur­ing the day.

He said when he en­quired why the ven­dors must leave for the week, he was re­port­ed­ly told that it was a de­ci­sion made by a com­mit­tee at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

Williams stressed that the ven­dors were not squat­ting but hads a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry to vend.

“We def­i­nite­ly will con­tin­ue vend­ing each day, as is said in the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing. We will cease at mid­night be­fore the cer­e­mo­ny when they have the pa­rade, and we will give them their space. As far as try­ing to bul­ly us in­to stay­ing home, we are not go­ing to do it. Why should the au­thor­i­ties come now and tell us to stay home for no jus­ti­fied rea­son? This is what you call bul­ly­ing, you want a de­f­i­n­i­tion of po­lit­i­cal bul­ly­ing, this is it.”

Williams said if he and his mem­bers were made to leave, he would take le­gal ac­tion against the state for loss of earn­ings for each ven­dor and their em­ploy­ees.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein, as well as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Avinash Singh on the mat­ter, but nei­ther re­spond­ed.


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