Shas­tri Boodan

Dis­grun­tled mar­ket ven­dors op­er­at­ing out of Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go say they feel they are be­ing per­se­cut­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The ven­dors demon­strat­ed out­side the fa­cil­i­ty on Fri­day, call­ing on the THA to halt any plans to close the mar­ket on Mon­day for sani­ti­sa­tion.

Ly­dia Joseph, spokesper­son for the ven­dors, said plans to close the mar­ket on Mon­days would crip­ple them fi­nan­cial­ly.

Joseph said the move was done with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with the ven­dors.

Joseph said this would mean that ven­dors would have to spend most of Sun­day clear­ing out their goods and re­stock­ing on Tues­day.

She said, “How are we sup­posed to sur­vive? We are reg­u­lar folks, we are reg­u­lar peo­ple. Did they think of us when they de­cid­ed to do this?

“We need some­thing to be done in this place. We need for you all to fix this.”

Joseph said oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions such as gro­ceries, the air­port and the port could sani­tise with­out clos­ing down. She said a sim­i­lar method must be adopt­ed in this case.

She said for the last two years the man­age­ment of the mar­ket had been pres­suris­ing ven­dors.

Natisha Pan­tin-Charles, Sec­re­tary for Agri­cul­ture on the THA said, “The Scar­bor­ough Mar­ket is a fa­cil­i­ty that sees high hu­man traf­fic on a dai­ly ba­sis as it is a hub for trade of food.

As we try to man­age to spread of the COVID-19 virus with­in this fa­cil­i­ty, we have been ad­vised by health of­fi­cials on the is­land that more reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent sani­ti­sa­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty is nec­es­sary.

“As such, the de­ci­sion was tak­en among man­age­ment that the fa­cil­i­ty be closed every Mon­day for thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion.

“This was deemed the most suit­able day as Mon­days see the least ac­tiv­i­ty and im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low the busiest days of the week (Fri­day, Sat­ur­day, Sun­day).

“This has be­come crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant as there has been a not­ed in­crease of COVID-19 in­fec­tions among ven­dors at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“This mea­sure is in the best in­ter­est of our stake­hold­ers and is im­ple­ment­ed to pro­tect the health of the staff, ven­dors and cus­tomers of the mar­ket.

“To com­pen­sate for the loss of the day, we have re­turned the open­ing hours at the mar­ket to 6 am to 6 pm.

“We con­tin­ue to so­lic­it the sup­port of our stake­hold­ers as we col­lec­tive­ly man­age the sit­u­a­tion at hand.”