ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Less than three years af­ter some $36 mil­lion was spent to de­com­mis­sion, re­mod­el and re­fur­bish the Scar­bor­ough Mar­ket, ven­dors are com­plain­ing about poor con­di­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty.

They are now call­ing on the cur­rent To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ad­min­is­tra­tion to fix all ex­ist­ing is­sues.

The fa­cil­i­ty was re­fur­bished un­der for­mer THA sec­re­tary of Food Pro­duc­tion, Forestry and Fish­eries Hay­den Spencer. Re­mod­el­ling work start­ed in 2015 un­der for­mer sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, Ma­rine Af­fairs, Mar­ket­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, God­win Adams. It was com­plet­ed and re­opened in 2020.

Dur­ing the five-year pe­ri­od, the ven­dors op­er­at­ed at a tem­po­rary fa­cil­i­ty in Shaw Park.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Spencer told Guardian Me­dia, “Sor­ry, no com­ment, all the in­fo you need is at the di­vi­sion.”

The ven­dors are call­ing for more ad­just­ments, along with cold stor­age and re­me­di­al re­pairs on the mar­ket.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, ven­dor Collin Mor­gan said, “When we come from Trinidad with our goods, most of them are spoiled and no­body says any­thing. We used to pack in the cold stor­age, and they stopped us and told us it’s not san­i­tary. Every day, things are go­ing on in the mar­ket, and they need to fix them, but they’re not fix­ing them. Too much pol­i­tics are play­ing in this mar­ket, and they have to do bet­ter than that.”

An­oth­er ven­dor, Edg­la Roach-Adams, com­plained about the poor ven­ti­la­tion.

“We are fac­ing prob­lems with the heat. I know we are hav­ing heat­waves, but this has been go­ing on for a long time. It’s very hu­mid here in the mid­dle of the day, es­pe­cial­ly when we have a lot of cus­tomers. Every­body is sweat­ing and drip­ping, even the stuff that we sell is spoil­ing faster than it should. If we keep wet­ting them, it’s re­al­ly hu­mid,” Roach-Adams said.

She said there was an agree­ment to out­fit the mar­ket with a cen­tral AC unit but that did not ma­te­ri­alise. She said the two large fans in­stalled at each end of the mar­ket are in­suf­fi­cient.

“The mar­ket is to­tal­ly en­closed, not even the breeze can get through. All we have is the fans in the air. We are ask­ing them to do some­thing for us... If they can’t do the AC, at least they can put in more fans,” she added.

Ly­dia Joseph, PRO of the Scar­bor­ough Mar­ket Ven­dors’ As­so­ci­a­tion, raised is­sues sur­round­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and struc­tur­al is­sues.

“The peo­ple who de­signed the mar­ket need to be called back to fin­ish the job. They need to take back the $36 mil­lion. The mar­ket is de­signed like no oth­er mar­ket. We have par­ents and kids that come to this mar­ket, and there’s not even a hand sink. Even in the food de­part­ment, you can’t plug in a warmer be­cause the break­er trips,” Joseph said.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, Nathisha Charles-Pan­tin, was con­fused about the is­sues raised. She said her di­vi­sion has been meet­ing of­ten with the ven­dors, work­ing with them to al­le­vi­ate long-stand­ing is­sues.

She re­ferred to for­mer sec­re­taries, say­ing, “You are now iden­ti­fy­ing ad­di­tion­al things that you’re telling me. So, I don’t know why you want me to com­ment.”