The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion has de­cid­ed to halt a project to con­struct new stalls with­in the Mara­bel­la mar­ket fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween ven­dors and en­gi­neer­ing per­son­nel on Thurs­day morn­ing.

With the busy week­end loom­ing ahead, the ven­dors led by Pres­i­dent Tim Bhag­wan­deen bro­kered a deal that if the Cor­po­ra­tion holds off on the project, they will stop their protests and pro­vide a list of con­cerns and rec­om­men­da­tions to the city. Bhag­wan­deen said the ven­dors were op­posed to the project be­cause of a re­duc­tion in the ex­ist­ing stall space and cor­ri­dor ar­eas.

“We were nev­er con­sult­ed on this. A re­duc­tion in space is a health haz­ard and a se­cu­ri­ty is­sue for us. We will not have walk­ing space and if there is an emer­gency, this will be a prob­lem for us,” he said. Bhag­wan­deen said the mar­ket had poor light­ing, dys­func­tion­al toi­lets and a car park that was in­ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of over­grown bush­es. “About 20 lights not work­ing,”

Bhag­wan­deen lament­ed. He pro­posed a se­ries of rec­om­men­da­tions, sug­gest­ing that paving the car park could po­ten­tial­ly free up space along the sides, front, and back of the mar­ket to ac­com­mo­date ad­di­tion­al stalls. Act­ing as­sis­tant en­gi­neer Richard Ram­per­sad who spoke to the ven­dors as­sured that the project will be halt­ed pend­ing dis­cus­sions.

He said the project was meant to stan­dard­ize the mar­ket stalls in Mara­bel­la by im­ple­ment­ing a pro­to­type used in the Cen­tral Mar­ket. He ac­knowl­edged an er­ror in the trench­ing size and pledged to rec­ti­fy the spac­ing to match the cur­rent lay­out. He said the con­crete stalls were be­ing built to ful­fil pub­lic health re­quire­ments. He not­ed that the steel and wood­en stalls de­te­ri­o­rate over time. He said the new stalls will have a curb all around and a place to store pro­duce off the ground.