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Who is a vendor?
A vendor is considered an economically disadvantaged person operating from a place that is not considered a registered business enterprise. There is now a need, however, for a re-examination of the definition of a vendor. This re-assessment is based on what one of the recently displaced sellers from the Stabroek Square said on national television.
The seller said that since she has moved to the new temporary location which was provided by the City Hall that her sales had plummeted to as low as $500 per day as against in the past when she was at the Stabroek Square and making as much as $18,000 per day. Yes, you read right, a vendor claimed that her sales as the Stabroek Square amounted to as much as $18,000 per day. These sales are on fruits which usually carry a 100% markup
A person making $18,000 per day either in sales or in profits cannot be considered as an economically disadvantaged person. That person should not be considered as a vendor. That person is making more money that stallholders in the markets are making and even some businesses in the heart of the city.
A person making that sort of money each day should be encouraged to rent property and operate as a legitimate business. That sort of revenue means that not all of those who were displaced at Stabroek Square were poor persons.
Vending was openly encouraged by the PNC-controlled City Council long before the PPP took office in 1992. Vending continued to be encouraged after the 1992 elections because it was seen as a political weapon and a means of rebalancing the business class.
The PPP never controlled the City Council and therefore the nonsense that some supporters of the PNC are claiming about twenty-three years of neglect of the city is a misrepresentation of why the city became nasty.
The metamorphosis that the City has undergone since the change in government and before Local Government Elections tells a different story about why Georgetown declined the way it did.
Vending grew uncontrollably while City Hall was under the control of opposition forces. The PPP could not have touched the vendors at Stabroek Square without risking a political riot in the City.
The PPP did more for vendors that was done by any other previous government. The PPP can be accused of always coming to the rescue of the vendors.
When the PNC and GGG controlled City Council moved against the Regent Street vendors after the 2006 elections, it was the PPP government that went and compulsorily acquired the Toolsie Persaud land on Water Street to create somewhere for the vendors to sell.
The PPP government spent more than four hundred million dollars of establishing that vendors’ mall on Water Street. No other government as ever spent that amount of money to help displaced vendors. There were many who argued that this money could have been put to better use.
The PPP however wanted to show that it was concerned for the poor people and so it compulsorily acquired land from the rich to give to the poor.
Regent Street had been cleared by City Council but new vendors took their place. The Council wanted to move these new vendors and the vendors protested claiming that many of them were single-parents.
The PPP government again came to their rescue and paid millions of dollars to prepare the section of Merriman Mall between Cummings and Light Streets in order to facilitate the new Regent Street vendors. These vendors did not take up the spots and therefore the expenditure was wasted.
The reason was obvious. These vendors want to sell in prime locations but they do not wish to be placed on a level playing field with legitimate businesses. They want to squat in front of established businesses and in public places and enjoy a captive market for which they only pay a cleaning fee.
There has always been a wider agenda afoot in terms of encouraging pavement vending. But no one wants to go there because such discussions have become too controversial for objective political discourse.
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