Even at the best of times, that is to say during periods when there is no excessive rainfall and no flooding, the status of Bourda Market (and other municipal markets) as a facility in which the business of conducting trade in items of food, including perishables, is highly questionable. Bourda Market is a vermin-infested and insanitary facility and the standards of cleanliness and maintenance upon which the municipality and the vendors appear to have settled would, in all likelihood, be dismissed as altogether unacceptable in other countries right here in the region. We have raised the matter of their relationship with the municipality with some vendors and their response, unfailingly, usually is that they are dealing with an institution that is not the least bit interested in providing value for the rents that they pay. What cannot be gainsaid as well is the culture of corruption that infests the relationship between City Hall employees and vendors in the markets and elsewhere and the impacts that those relationships have on the delivery of quality service.
The management of waste disposal—including rotting poultry, fruit and vegetables—is itself a matter of public disgrace. Truth be told, a considerable measure of blame attaches to those vendors who have been less than sustained in their protestations over having to trade in areas of the market—notably in Bourda Green—cheek by jowl with piles of filth, a situation which, under different circumstances, would be condemned by the sanitation authorities within the very City Council that allows this atrocity to occur.
In circumstances where the conditions in our markets raise serious issues that have to do with both the quality of trading spaces afforded vendors and the associated health risks, neither the local business support organizations—notably the Private Sector Commission and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry—nor the Ministry of Health have troubled themselves over the conditions in any sustained manner designed to secure a result that goes beyond what we are told is an ensuing post-flood cleanup.
Some time ago the Georgetown Chamber had announced that it was allowing for membership by small business enterprises and here it is apposite to wonder whether the bigger traders in the markets might not find some of the protection which they appear to need from what they say is the unacceptable exploitation of the municipal authorities.
One can hardly help but proffer a wry smile over what would appear to be our controversial Town Clerk’s fixation with the post-flood cleanup in circumstances where another deluge could see the situation return to the proverbial square one and where, moreover, the current circumstances ought to give rise to an initiative designed to remedy the wider problem, not least insofar as it relates to the serious health risks posed by the substantive state of the market.
Having regard to the considerable inefficiencies that attend the management of the municipality, it is hard to tell whether revenues accruing from the running of the market are sufficient to at least make a start to the comprehensive renovation and restoration that is so patently necessary rather than to persist with the option of making the facility’s population of rats and roaches more comfortable. The fact of the matter is that for decades we have remained indifferent to the state of affairs in our markets. As evidenced in the extant case of Bourda Market, it is a fact that a brisk downpour can create physical conditions that bring trading to a grinding halt and trigger vendor protests.
Unfortunately, the response from the Town Clerk is altogether disconnected from solving the real and more profound problem of affording our market vendors safer and healthier trading spaces that take account of much more than defending those spaces against the frequent heavy downpours another of which will manifest itself in the fullness of time.
