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Seawall vendors officially removed
On Tuesday, the proverbial walls went tumbling down on four single mothers whose only source of income was the vending that they carried out on the Seawalls in the vicinity of the Kitty Pump Station, at the northern end of Vlissengen Road. The women’s stalls were towed away.
The vendors and their children standing in front of a stall that was about to be towed away.
The Ministry of Public works had some time ago issued a notice to the effect that the seawall and its embankment between Vlissengen Road and the Ocean View International Hotel will no longer be available for vending and/or recreational purposes.
The prohibition notice was premised on the Ministry’s observation that vending had resulted in “damage to the sea defence infrastructure, excessive build up of garbage in the drains and canals, leading to flooding, the increasing traffic congestion and its related safety risks, especially on Sundays and holidays.”
It was proposed that all vendors, inclusive of mobile units, drink carts and hot dog stands, be relocated to the section of the seawall between Camp Street and Vlissengen Road and had made arrangements for that section of the road to be made a one-way thoroughfare heading east.
In order to aid this move, the Public Works Ministry had activated the street lights on the embankment, a move, which necessitated cleaning the area to facilitate parking and vending.
The four vendors, who for more than a decade plied their trade on the seawall tarmac, are Justina Mohamed, Michelle Williams, Dolly Smith and Haline Bunbury. The women are claiming that they are not opposed to the move but are disappointed that they were not offered a more suitable location to vend. They were offered grass-covered spots several metres west of the Kitty Pump station.
According to the women, while they were still awaiting answers to determine their fate, the government just went ahead and “do what they want anyhow. We beg Benn not to but he think he is God.”
The vendors said “We have to buy school clothes for our children. Welfare always checking at the school to see if they going. But how they really think people getting money to send their children to school? We trying to make sure we children don’t have to come and do de same thing we doing.”
The women claimed that the section where they are being sent is one where it is likely for them to get rob and “business won’t be bright.”
According to them, Minister Benn dared them to take him to court. But the women said that “we barely get money to survive, how we will take him to court. That same Benn is known as de ‘hammer man’ and he think he is God.”
Williams said that for the first time in her life she had recently been able to purchase a chair set from courts on hire purchase. “Me ain’t even done pay for it, I now get me children to sit down in comfort and like they want it get tek back.”
Williams, who has four children, three of whom are minors, added that she is a “‘pressure case’ and this ain’t doing good for me health at all.”
Mohamed told Kaieteur News that she has a daughter attending the Bishop’s High School. She said that the lessons fee for her is overwhelming. The woman added that “Benn heself de tell me to send she UG. How he expect me to get the money to do that?”
The consensus among the women is that the government “don’t care about them but they have to remember is we put them there.”
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