The decline in the volume of trading at the Stabroek Market following the siting of a minibus park on the tarmac opposite the facility ought to be a matter of concern to the major urban umbrella business organizations since it could have a knock-on effect on trading in the wider commercial centre, a Stabroek Market stallholder has told Stabroek Business.
“Bringing a sense of order to the parking arrangements in downtown Georgetown is a matter that ought to concern the entire urban business community and the impact of the new parking arrangements on Stabroek stallholders ought to be high on the agenda of the Private Sector Commission and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce,” the stallholder told Stabroek Business.
Asked whether he knew whether issues like parking in the city were part of the agenda of the PSC and the GCCI, the stallholder told Stabroek Business that he felt that any issue that impacted on the ability of the urban business community to benefit from “fair and reliable trade” ought to concern the umbrella bodies.
The vendor told Stabroek Business that he fears that the siting of the bus park on the Stabroek tarmac could impact permanently on the trading fortunes of stallholders since, according to him, “it denies parking for stallholders, customers and delivery vans and trucks and makes it difficult for stallholders to do business.
At a time when the cost of living is rising the livelihood of a large number of businessmen, their families and their employees and their families is being affected and that ought to concern the business organizations,” the stallholder said.
According to the businessman the current parking woes in the vicinity of the Stabroek Market was not the only issue affecting stallholders and vendors on which the PSC and the GCCI had demonstrated indifference. “I remember two years ago a delegation of businessmen from these organizations visited the vendors’ arcade and promised to make representation to City Hall for improved conditions. Nothing has happened since then. On other occasions there has been representation made to City Hall on issues such as street vending and garbage collection. Again, little or nothing has come out of these meetings. In describing the urban business organizations as “weak and ineffective” the stallholder told Stabroek Business that he questioned whether the PSC and the GCCI had the will to provide representation for urban small businesses.
The stallholder, who says that he has been trading in the market for more than fifteen years told Stabroek Business that he did not feel that the PSC and the GCCI had “any sort of agenda” for dealing with what he described as “the real problems” facing the urban business community. “You just have to look at how ineffective they have being in trying to get government to ease the VAT rates and to provide other tax breaks,” the stallholder said.
According to the businessman while all of the trading businesses in the country face a number of common problems including VAT and rising prices, stallholders and street vendors face additional problems that had to do with the fact that they ran smaller operations. “Part of the problem has to do with the division in the business community between the big traders on the one hand and stallholders and vendors, on the other hand. I don’t think that the big businesses in the city consider stallholders and other smaller business to be a real part of the business community, At least they do not behave as if they do,” he added.
“It is a fact that the bigger businessmen who run the private sector bodies have more influence with the decision-making organizations like the government and the City Council. What they have failed to do is to seek to form alliances with people like stallholders and vendors. We feel left out,” he said.
According to the stallholder the decision to “evict” stallholders from the Stabroek Market Square and to use it as a park for minibuses plying routes in Georgetown was taken “in a high-handed manner,” without any consultation with either the stallholders or their Association. “One day our customers were parking there and the next day we had nowhere to park. The manner in which the whole thing was done leaves us to wonder whether the authorities recognize us as a legitimate part of the business community,” he said.
But former Head of the GCCI Captain Gerry Gouveia told Stabroek Business that he rejected the notion that the two umbrella business organizations were unconcerned about the problems facing the small business sector, Gouveia said that while business organizations would naturally be concerned about any development that impacted negatively on any section of the business community, efforts to adjust the parking arrangements in the vicinity of the Stabroek Market had to be seen in ihe context of bringing a sense of order to the traffic arrangements in the city. “Speaking for myself I would say that the desirable thing would be for the stallholders, the Council and the relevant government institutions to work to ensure that the concerns of the stallholders are taken account of even as efforts are made to address the congestion near the Stabroek Market.
Gouveia told Stabroek Business that he was in favor of umbrella business organizations placing the concerns of small businesses on their agenda since he felt that small businesses, including vending, were “an important part of the country’s commercial culture.” He said that what was important was that large and small business ventures coexist in an environment in which account is taken of the need for both to grow and prosper. “That, I think, is one of the critical challenges facing the business community as a whole,” he added.
The Stabroek Stallholders Association is a body that interfaces with City Hall through the Office of the Clerk of Markets to address issues pertaining to trading conditions inside and around the facility. The stallholder said that part of the problem with conditions inside the Stabroek Market was that City Hall needed to spend more of the revenue being collected as stall rents to continually upgrade conditions inside the market. “The problem here, I believe, is that because City Hall is always so low on funds, part of the revenue collected from markets goes into other things,” he added. He said that while he was aware that City Hall has undertaken to pursue alternative parking for stallholders, their customers and their delivery vehicles, he felt that this was an issue on which the PSC and the GCCI ought to support the Council. He pointed out that in the cases of some big city businesses it was also “a matter of self-interest” since the current parking arrangements would eventually impact elsewhere in the city.
