KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Ven­dors who refuse to take up le­gal spots at the Fruit Court along Har­ris Prom­e­nade will have to leave San Fer­nan­do to con­tin­ue ply­ing their trade.

That was the ul­ti­ma­tum San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris gave to street ven­dors who con­tin­ue to de­fy the City Cor­po­ra­tion’s no-vend­ing on High Street or­ders. He said he would not meet with the ven­dors again on the mat­ter.

The new vend­ing area will open on Sat­ur­day.

Par­ris said: “It has been done in Ch­agua­nas. It has been done in San­gre Grande. It has been done in oth­er parts of the coun­try and, there­fore, San Fer­nan­do will be re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing what we’re do­ing.

“We’ve pro­vid­ed an area for the ven­dors. Those who do not want to go, well then, they have to leave the City of San Fer­nand.,”

At a statu­to­ry meet­ing last week, Par­ris an­nounced that San Fer­nan­do’s his­toric En­gine No. 11—the Last Train to San Fer­nan­do—will an­chor a new Fruit Court for fruit ven­dors, crafts­men, and leather work­ers.

The lo­ca­tion re­places the for­mer fruit stalls at Li­brary Cor­ner and il­le­gal cots along High Street, pro­vid­ing a struc­tured and reg­u­lat­ed space for trade.

Par­ris said the ini­tia­tive pro­motes fair com­merce while pre­serv­ing pub­lic or­der and safe­ty. He said there will al­so be a “prom­e­nade pa­trol” for added safe­ty.

Ven­dors must ap­ply to the Cor­po­ra­tion and pay a $500 fee to op­er­ate legal­ly at the new site. How­ev­er, ven­dors op­er­at­ing at High Street and Li­brary Cor­ner ex­pressed con­cern that re­lo­cat­ing to the Fruit Court would se­vere­ly im­pact their in­come. They said the area is fre­quent­ed by va­grants and lacks the foot traf­fic that High Street of­fers.

They claimed that vend­ing on High Street keeps them ac­ces­si­ble to com­muters and sus­tains their liveli­hoods, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing these dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times. While many ven­dors say they are will­ing to pay fees and com­ply with reg­u­la­tions, they are call­ing for a com­pro­mise—such as des­ig­nat­ed vend­ing days on High Street—rather than be­ing pushed out en­tire­ly.

Par­ris dis­missed the ven­dors’ claims, say­ing they lacked any em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence about pedes­tri­an traf­fic. He was al­so sur­prised by their re­sis­tance, not­ing that he had re­ceived calls from ven­dors ready to move to the new lo­ca­tion.

“I will not be play­ing this back-and-for­ward game with them. Vend­ing is il­le­gal, and vend­ing on High Street is il­le­gal. We gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty from De­cem­ber, now it’s June,” he said.

“As far as I am con­cerned, there are still signs straight up and down High Street say­ing ‘No Vend­ing’, and once the area is fin­ished, we will en­force the law.”

Par­ris main­tained that vend­ing on High Street presents health and safe­ty risks. He said ven­dors oc­cu­py the same foot­paths emer­gency re­spon­ders night need in the event of a cri­sis.

“Any re­spon­si­ble leader has to look at both sides of the coin. I un­der­stand that they are look­ing to im­prove their liveli­hood and what have I done? I have not said vend­ing is il­le­gal and failed to of­fer an al­ter­na­tive. I pro­vid­ed a whole space for them at a sub­sidised rate so that they can legal­ly ply their trade,” he said.

He added that the Cor­po­ra­tion is ex­plor­ing part­ner­ships with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) to help ven­dors de­vel­op and ex­pand their busi­ness­es.

“Cer­tain­ly, they can­not grow their busi­ness with cots in front of le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es that pay tax­es, that have over­heads, and have a staff to pay and think that any re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment would turn a blind eye to that.”

Par­ris said the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion is restor­ing or­der to the city and that in­vest­ing in a des­ig­nat­ed vend­ing space is with­in its rights to im­prove the lives of all San Fer­nan­di­ans, in­clud­ing mer­chants on High Street who are of­ten blocked and in­con­ve­nienced by il­le­gal vend­ing out­side their stores.