Vendors utilizing the Water Street (Toolsie Persaud) Arcade say they are disappointed but not surprised that the badly needed rehabilitation of the facility was not specifically mentioned in Finance Minister Ashni Singh’s presentation of ongoing plans for the rehabilitation of the city during his budget presentation in the National Assembly last Friday.
In his budget presentation Singh said that the focus of the current effort to restore Georgetown was focused on garbage collection and disposal, elevation and beautification of five of the city’s six main avenues, removing impediments and rehabilitating road shoulders and verges, drains and canals.
While Singh told the National Assembly that government is “heartened” by the response of the business sector to the clean-up exercise the vendors told Stabroek Business that given the location of the arcade in the heart of Georgetown the clean-up exercise ought to have attached special importance to the rehabilitation of the arcade. The vendors say that while their hopes that the arcade may have been rehabilitated had risen late last year in the wake of the city clean-up announcement they had since been notified that such an exercise was not envisaged under the present initiative. Stabroek Business understands that a private sector group which is collaborating with the Georgetown City Council and government in the present pre – Cricket World Cup sprucing up exercise is to erect a screen designed to conceal the dilapidated interior of the facility.
While officials of the municipality have said that the vendors will be allowed to ply their trade from the facility during the Cricket World Cup period the vendors say that they are less than optimistic that the arcade will attract visitors given its present condition. They say that meetings with City Hall over the past few years to discuss the state of the facility have yielded no results and that some of their number had long resorted to breaking the law by plying their trade on the streets and pavements outside the arcade.
Asked whether the Finance Minister’s announcement that the city clean-up exercise would extend beyond Cricket World Cup may have provided some hope that the arcade may be renovated later this year the vendors said that they would believe it only when it happens. “We have lost faith in the system. As small vendors we are clearly not regarded as part of the commercial community in the city,” a spokesman for the vendors said.
Several months ago Deputy Mayor Robert Williams had told Stabroek Business that City Hall was in possession of a plan for the construction of a multistorey shopping complex. According to the vendors’ spokesman, however, the volume of business being done by vendors occupying the arcade could not possibly allow them to afford the rates that were likely to be charged for the rental of space in a modern shopping mall.
Meanwhile, private sector sources have told Stabroek Business that the “lack of detail” in the Finance Minister’s budget presentation on government’s plan for the development of the sea wall was disappointing since the development of that area into an urban recreational facility was an integral part of the rehabilitation of the capital. The source said that the entertainment and commercial potential of the sea wall area, including what he described as “an organized system of vending” meant that the development plan for the sea wall referred to in the budget presentation ought to include a significant private sector input. In his budget presentation the Finance Minister said that government is currently identifying those aspects of the sea wall project that can be uindertaken immediately.
