RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Four street food ven­dors op­er­at­ing at the Cross Cross­ing food strip in San Fer­nan­do faced evic­tion yes­ter­day af­ter fail­ing to set­tle out­stand­ing rent owed to the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC).

The en­force­ment ac­tion caused a scram­ble among oth­er op­er­a­tors af­ter word spread that carts be­long­ing to ten­ants who had not paid rent for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods were be­ing re­moved.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, pres­i­dent of the Cross Cross­ing Food Ven­dors As­so­ci­a­tion, Har­ry­nar­ine Sir­ju said while ven­dors must ho­n­our their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, the Cor­po­ra­tion should have pro­vid­ed writ­ten no­tice be­fore tak­ing ac­tion against er­rant op­er­a­tors.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion had writ­ten to the City Cor­po­ra­tion in Feb­ru­ary re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss pro­posed changes to ven­dors’ con­tracts, but no meet­ing has yet been grant­ed,” Sir­ju said.

He said ven­dors are al­ready re­quired un­der their agree­ments to keep their im­me­di­ate vend­ing bays clean and re­move garbage at the end of each shift.

How­ev­er, Sir­ju said ven­dors are con­cerned about sug­ges­tions that they may be re­quired to take on broad­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for wash­ing and main­tain­ing the en­tire vend­ing area, es­pe­cial­ly since the Cor­po­ra­tion pre­vi­ous­ly hired con­trac­tors to car­ry out that work. De­spite the dis­pute, Sir­ju said ven­dors still have a du­ty to main­tain the area and meet their fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

“If you are hav­ing chal­lenges, you need to meet with the Cor­po­ra­tion and work out a pay­ment plan,” he said. “You have to speak to the peo­ple you owe your debts to and come to an agree­ment. If ven­dors com­ply with the arrange­ment we would not get our­selves in this prob­lem.”

Ven­dor Bri­an Mo­hammed, who op­er­ates the D Cab­in food cart, said he does not be­lieve the rental fee charged by the Cor­po­ra­tion is ex­ces­sive.

Ven­dors pay about $1,500 per month, or rough­ly $15,000 an­nu­al­ly, along with mi­nor ad­min­is­tra­tive fees.

Mo­hammed said he pays sig­nif­i­cant­ly more for an­oth­er busi­ness he op­er­ates in Cou­va and is cur­rent­ly paid up to De­cem­ber, though he some­times pays in larg­er in­stal­ments rather than strict­ly by quar­ter.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that some ven­dors have fall­en be­hind on pay­ments as busi­ness at the once-bustling food strip has slowed.

“When I came here, it was about 20 of us and every­body used to make mon­ey and smile at the end of the day. Now there are many more ven­dors and peo­ple sell­ing sim­i­lar prod­ucts, so sales are slow­er,” Mo­hammed said.

The in­creased com­pe­ti­tion has forced him to re­duce work­ers’ salaries to keep his op­er­a­tion run­ning.

Mo­hammed al­so raised con­cerns about pro­posed con­tract con­di­tions, which have caused un­ease among some op­er­a­tors.

Ven­dors were told they might be re­quired to move their carts two or three times per week to fa­cil­i­tate clean­ing of the area.

“It costs about $2,500 to $3,000 every time to move the cart be­cause you have to get a truck to trans­port it,” he said.

His cart, he ex­plained, has been heav­i­ly mod­i­fied to ac­com­mo­date both day­time and night-time op­er­a­tions and can­not eas­i­ly be dis­man­tled.

In­stead, Mo­hammed has been tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for clean­ing his space, in­clud­ing wash­ing grease traps and the sur­round­ing bays.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris dis­missed claims cir­cu­lat­ing among ven­dors that they are be­ing pushed out to make way for a large pri­vate busi­ness or ad­di­tion­al park­ing.

Par­ris said the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s ac­tions are sim­ply aimed at re­cov­er­ing out­stand­ing debts and en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with rental agree­ments.

The Cor­po­ra­tion had been in­formed more than a year ago that sig­nif­i­cant ar­rears had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed at the Cross Cross­ing vend­ing site, and ef­forts were made to work with ven­dors to set­tle bal­ances.

He added that the Cor­po­ra­tion has faced a $4.4 mil­lion re­duc­tion in its al­lo­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, mak­ing it nec­es­sary to pur­sue re­cov­ery of out­stand­ing debts.

The Cross Cross­ing food strip was orig­i­nal­ly es­tab­lished to en­cour­age night-time com­merce and bring more ac­tiv­i­ty to the city.