As he opened the San Fer­nan­do Fruit Court and Leather Craft and Cloth­ing vend­ing area on Sat­ur­day, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris again warned ven­dors that no one will be al­lowed to sell on the streets from this week.

“The law will be en­forced,” warned the may­or dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia. The vend­ing zone is lo­cat­ed with­in the area of the last train to San Fer­nan­do, at Har­ris Prom­e­nade.

There are 16 booths in to­tal - eight for the fruit ven­dors and eight for the leather­craft and cloth­ing ven­dors.  Not­ing that they were on a first-come, first-serve ba­sis, he en­cour­aged the ven­dors to reg­is­ter for the booths, em­pha­siz­ing that af­ter months of le­nien­cy, they would re­sume strict en­force­ment of vend­ing laws from this week. 

“Next week, as promised, I will con­tin­ue to en­force the law. From De­cem­ber to June, we had mem­bers of the vend­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. We gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ply their trade, but ob­vi­ous­ly, as we all know, vend­ing on the streets is il­le­gal,” he said. “And there­fore, we have opened this area, and we think that it is suit­able and ad­e­quate for per­sons who want to ply their trade at $500, which is a sub­sidised cost, and we are ask­ing them to come. They have been com­ing since last week to sign up to legal­ly ply their trade. So next week, no vend­ing on the streets of San Fer­nan­do. The law will be en­forced, just as we en­forced the law last year.” 

Par­ris had con­struct­ed vend­ing booths in front of the mar­ket on Mu­cu­rapo Street last year, but the ven­dors re­fused to oc­cu­py them and had protest­ed in front of the City Cor­po­ra­tion.

The may­or as­sured that law en­force­ment and safe­ty mea­sures were al­ready in place at the new vend­ing area. 

“There haven’t been any home­less peo­ple in this area for over a year. There is some­thing called the Prom­e­nade Pa­trol. The po­lice will be man­ning this area. So, from Tues­day to Fri­day, be­tween the hours of 8 am to 5 pm, there are po­lice that pa­trol this area,” he said. To strength­en se­cu­ri­ty fur­ther, he said the City Coun­cil is al­so con­sid­er­ing ad­di­tion­al pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty.

The vend­ing area will op­er­ate un­der of­fi­cial mar­ket hours, from 6 am to 6 pm. Last week, how­ev­er, ven­dors op­er­at­ing at High Street and Li­brary Cor­ner ex­pressed con­cern that re­lo­cat­ing to the Fruit Court would se­vere­ly im­pact their in­come. They com­plained that the area was fre­quent­ed by va­grants and lacked the foot traf­fic that High Street of­fers.