It is probably about two weeks (or thereabouts) since Mr. Royston King, the new Town Clerk, publicly announced that he would be giving priority attention to the rehabilitation of the collapsed section of the Stabroek Market wharf – and while that exercise is going on – the relocation of at least some of the vendors who are now displaced.
We can confirm that up to last Monday nothing had been done to repair the collapsed section; of the wharf; as for the situation with regard to the relocation of the vendors, preoccupied as they are with getting on with their lives, they appeared somewhat amused when we asked them about the announced plans for their temporary relocation.
Among the things that they said to us was that they have had no formal communication with the municipality about either the repairs or the relocation and that all of what they had learnt so far had come from the media.
Of course we recognize – based on the municipality’s approach to the Minister of Works for help – that it does not have the money and, it would appear, the other requisites, to effect the repairs and there have also been suggestions to the effect that there may well be no convenient space over which the municipality has control on which all of the vendors can fit. Before we immerse ourselves in any misplaced sympathy for the municipality, however, it should be borne in mind that the altogether appalling condition of our municipal markets is, in one way or another, a function of the long years of inaction and ineptitude on the part of the municipality. Incidentally, this may be as good a time as any to make the point that sections of City Hall itself now appear on the verge of collapse and that were that to happen this nation is unlikely ever to forgive its occupants.
We have been unable to ventilate these matters with either Mr. King or the Mayor. City Hall persists in the practice of protracted meetings, the outcomes of which, on the basis of the available evidence, do not appear to impact to any great extent on the efficiency of the institution. We do not expect that the practice will persist under the successor administration.
To return to the matter of the repairs to the collapsed wharf and the fate of the vendors this newspaper has come to know some of the vendors and to understand their plight. Some of them are among the very poorest of the poor and the fruit and vegetables (among other things) that they vend are in most instances the means by which their families are supported…so that while we understand that it will take resources which City Hall may be pressed to find to improve the area in which the vendors trade and while, in the meantime, they have to be located, we fully expect that having given a commitment Mr. King will move with alacrity to ensure that he keeps his word in the shortest possible time.
