FORCED TO SELL ON THE PAVEMENT

Dec 17, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Last Saturday morning, on one of the local radio stations, a caller made some startling comments which if they are true, require an explanation from the Georgetown Municipality.
The caller said that she was a businesswoman on Regent Street and that persons attached to the Municipality were charging store owners who were selling outside of their stores on the pavements, the sum of $2,500 per day, while vendors operating were being asked to pay the miserly sum of $1,000 per week. The caller said this was unfair more so, since the monies had to be paid at the start of the working day.
If this is true then it raises a number of questions: Firstly, is this fee that the caller said that is being collected lawful, and if, or under what regulation or statute is it being imposed. It was announced earlier in the year that vendors would be required to pay a sanitation fee but no one has questioned whether this fee in itself is lawful. Is it?
And if it is, then how does one determine the amount to be paid by vendors and the amount to be paid by legitimate sellers who because of the illegal vendors squatting in front of their premises, are forced to vend their wares on the pavement in front of their stores.
These store owners are not vending on the pavements because they are greedy. They are doing so because if they do not, vendors will swarm the pavement in front of their businesses and take it over.
Secondly, why was it considered necessary to collect a “cleaning fee” from vendors? If they are illegal, will the collection of this fee not be seen as granting them some form of legitimate status on the pavements?
Would collecting a small fee not also be seen as a means of legitimizing the operations of illegal vending? Just asking!
Thirdly, if what the caller said is true, how were the fees arrived at? Why the disparity between what legitimate businesses pay for vending on the pavements and what illegal vendors pay. Why this big difference? Why should people who have invested millions, who pay their taxes have to pay more than those who are illegal and who are squatting on the pavements?
Fourthly, what sort of message is being sent in this society if what the caller said is true? What message is being sent about establishing a business?
If vendors, who do not have to invest in buying properties or the risk of taking a loan to do so, or the risk of having to carry high inventories are going to be allowed on the pavements to sell, then what message does this send to legitimate businesses, those who just in order to sell have to invest hundreds of millions, who have to pay massive overheads and who have to employ staff are being discouraged.
What message are we sending to young people? What message are we sending to those restaurants that have to invest in costly equipment because they handle food and have to obtain food handlers certificate, yet we can have vans being converted into caravans that sell food at the sides of streets and nothing is being done to discourage this activity.
The answer to all of these questions is that vending is a complex issue. This is the answer that is offered time and time again. But everyone knows there is an agenda at work here. That agenda has been at work for over thirty years. It has failed. The only thing is those who are still pushing it, do not realize this.

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