Seasonal city vendors at severe disadvantaged

Nov 25, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,
Relative to an article in the Guyana Chronicle Newspaper of Wednesday, November 20, 2019 regarding “All clear for seasonal city vendors”, the Guyana Market Vendors Union (GMVU) is cognizant of the fact that such an activity is traditional at this time of the year and is meant to allow vendors inclusive of seasonal vendors to be able to share in the expected windfall.
However, the union has some concerns as to how this year-end activity is being administered.
It should be noted that up to 2018, venders were required to pay according to the type of goods being sold, as per pallet space -1 pallet = 4 feet).
It goes as follows: groceries (1 pallet space)- $5,000 per week; (bread pallet space)- $3,000 per week; watches and shades (1 pallet space) $2,500 per week; clothing etc. (1 pallet space) $2,000 per week.
If one needs to or can afford more than one pallet spaces, if available, the cost is multiplied by that number.
Here is where the small vendor is at a disadvantage, whereby very large stallholders on the western side of the road, on account of their affluence, gobble up large swaths of the vending area opposite their stalls irrespective of the cost to acquire same, colluding with council officials on the ground.
What is also disheartening is that many poor and wannabe seasonal vendors, will never get a chance to do so and their desire to get some Christmas necessities and goodies for their families and relatives will never be realized.
It should be noted that in 2019, the space has become smaller but more expensive in that one can no longer get a pallet space – four feet- it is now reduced to three feet- with no spaces in between stalls to allow for ingress and egress.
Hence, that three feet space now costs $2,500 or $3,000 per week.
Pallets being four feet, it is now obvious that the pallet will project beyond the three feet line, so that one has no choice but to pay for two spaces $6,000 or $24,000 per month.
At $2,500 per week ($10,000) and $3,000 per week ($12,000 per month), these one-time and small vendors can ill afford, faced with the fierce competition of the yuletide season.
The amount aforementioned will be close to or even more than what the large established stalls and some stores pay regularly per month.
There is also a large store in Longden and America Streets that encumber the entire pavement with seasonal goods, so that persons have no choice but to use the dangerous vehicular roadway to traverse.
One condition for selling in those little cubicles is that the vender must use no form of overhead protection-not even an umbrella.
They and their goods are easy prey for the elements.
The proletariat in this country is indeed an endangered species.
If the powerful private sector or the manufacturing association express any concern, there is an immediate response from the powers that be, but the small stallholders and vendors are never consulted as their will and more so their survival is often brutally challenged.
The Mayor is made to believe through his officers that the disgruntled small vendors are but a few, which is not true.
It is either that they are lying to him or that they are bent on making him look bad.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that the large affluent stallholders at Stabroek Market among others are not loyal or committed to anything but are saturated with ingrained greed while loyalty and commitment to a cause or ideal lies deep in the bosom of this army of small vendors.
They just need to know that someone care and I hope those people are listening.
Eon Andrews
President of the Guyana Market Vendors Union

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