Give each affected vendor a million dollars!

May 07, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The removal of the vendors from the Stabroek Market area is a blessing in disguise. The vendors will end up being better off in the long run because of their removal from that Square.
Firstly, most of them did not belong there. Many of them were illegal vendors. Illegal vending has an additional cost to it. Everyone knows what is being referred to as the additional costs that these vendors usually have to bear.
They would have had to pay people to daily fetch and remove their goods. Many of them had to sleep with their goods and spend as many as sixteen hours in that area. Their families suffered. This too is a cost. As result, they were always in the red unable to make a profit because of these additional costs they had to bear.
The vendors were trespassing on legitimate businesses. This is a form of economic hijacking that is not good for business, not good for the country and not good for vendors. This policy was deliberately encouraged by politicians whose toleration of illegal vending was on the grounds that it was a complex problem.
The problem is not so complex anymore. How things have changed, but still remain the same!
Secondly, the removal of the vendors means they are now free agents. They have been liberated from the state of illegality and can now establish their own legitimate businesses by either renting property or establishing business where they live. They can now become business people in their own right.
As vendors, they were merely making a hustle and pretending that this was business. Very few of them have anything to show for the years they have been vending their wares at Stabroek Square. Vending is a profitless profession. A great many vendors are just sitting all day in their stalls without any sales.
Thirdly, their removal will allow them to perhaps find jobs where they can enjoy a steady income. When years ago, the City Council removed the tents from Regent Street, there were similar cries as we have today. There were the usual cries of vendors being single parents and having children to send to school. There were concerns that there would be an increase in crime because of the removal. It never happened.
In fact, the economy enjoyed a boost because business thrived, more people began to patronize Regent Street stores and more employment was created for workers, far more than the number of vendors that were displaced. Those who therefore feel that vending is an economic problem and that it is a contest for economic space are misleading the vendors.
The poor people in this country are better off because of the removal of vending since it will allow hundreds of jobs to be created in legitimate businesses, including for some of those vendors who may be interested in working for other people.
Those who are fanning the anger of the vendors should be helping to organize them. They should be organizing them to take loans to open their own businesses. They should be helping them to go into importation and exportation.
They should be using the experience of the vendors to help them to improve their circumstances. Those who want to help the vendors should ask the government to give to each affected vendor a grant of one million dollars to start up a business.
The former PPP government spent almost $400 million to buy a property to relocate pavement vendors. The vendors would have been better off if that money was split amongst them. Government has the money to give the affected vendors from Stabroek Square a million dollars each.
The vendors will not be going back to Stabroek Square.
They are going to be allowed to sell at the old Royal Castle site. The owner of that plot of land is taking a high risk gamble by considering allowing the vendors to use there for three months.
When the three months is up how will he get them off. Unlike the City Council which can remove the vendors as they did, private property owners do not have that liberty. They have to take Court Action.
The vendors, in any event, do not want to go there. They want to vend in prime areas without the risks that are borne by legitimate businesses. That sort of thinking has destroyed this country in the past and it will destroy it again if it is allowed traction.

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Give each affected vendor a million dollars!

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