With less than two weeks remaining before Christmas the perennial army of street vendors seeking to ‘cash in’ on the seasonal demand has ignored the tough line taken by the city police for more than a year now and have returned to the streets in force.
When Stabroek Business visited the streets in the commercial area earlier this week scores of vendors were doing brisk trade in seasonal consumer goods on pavements and in some cases on the roadway in Water street and Regent street in the full view of city constables.
Two constables with whom this newspaper spoke told Stabroek Business that they had been directed to “go easy” on the vendors since Local Government Minister Kellawan Lall had indicated earlier that the vendors would be allowed to ply their trade in the customarily prohibited areas during the pre-Christmas period.
When Stabroek Business spoke with Town Clerk Beulah Williams on Wednesday she said that City Hall had indeed taken a position that it would be ‘flexible” with the vendors during the holiday period. Williams said, however, that the amnesty did not mean that City Hall had abandoned its tough line on pavement and street vending. She said that City Hall was still insisting on a measure of good order even as efforts were being made to find areas where the vendors could be placed.
The evidence of the Water street area earlier this week, however, clearly suggested that City Hall’s plan to exercise a measure of control over the vendors was not working. Sections of the Water street pavement were taken over entirely by vendors, blocking entrances to business places and forcing commuters to use the street.
Some businessmen with whom Stabroek Business spoke said that they did not consider it worthwhile to demand that City Hall enforce the law at this time since it did not appear that the city police had been instructed to remove the vendors. According to a Water street businessman 2007 had been such a difficult year that it was inevitable that people would be trying to “catch their hand” on the streets at this time.
Whether City Hall will succeed in finding places for the vendors during the less than two weeks left before Christmas is doubtful and according to a municipal source the vendors are already so “well entrenched that it would take a major and decidedly unpleasant operation to move them from their present locations.”
Meanwhile, the business community continues to report the persistence of sluggish seasonal commercial activity. Downtown stores were reporting that their already ‘slow’ sales are probably being further affected by the wave of vendors who have appeared on the streets and who, in many cases, are acquiring the identical items being sold in shops from distributors and wholesalers and offering them at cheaper prices.
Stabroek Business noted several cases in which identical toys, christmas cards, linen and some kitchen utencils, were being sold cheaper on city pavements than in stores.
