Dear Editor,
Red Thread condemns the treatment meted out to the Stabroek Market vendors by the Mayor and Town Clerk of the Georgetown City Council. The vendors are poor women and men, the majority of them single parents, scrambling honestly to earn a living to ensure the survival of themselves and their families. They are citizens of this country who contribute to the economy. The majority have children to send to school, bills to pay, house rent to find, loans to repay to lenders like IPED, just to name a few of their essential expenses. How are they supposed to fulfil these demands if their livelihoods are being threatened in the manner they are presently experiencing at the hands of the Georgetown City Council?
All of us want more cleanliness in the city, but if that is the issue there are other poor people-friendly actions that could have been taken – for example, by putting monitors in place to ensure that vendors keep their environment clean and imposing fines on those who don’t comply.
When the previous Town Clerk was in office and wanted to remove the vendors, this current Town Clerk and Mayor were fighting against it. Now they are in power they are doing the very thing they condemned not so long ago. It is their approach that we are strongly against. If it is that vending where the vendors are is illegal and they have to be removed, then proper provision should have been in place to accommodate them elsewhere, after consultation. You can’t remove them and then put them on hold until you come up with a plan. That is putting the cart before the horse, otherwise known as bad management.
For the longer term, if street vending is illegal then the question is what legal areas of work will be created. Guyana is preparing for a ‘Grand Jubiless’ for our fiftieth Indepen-dence anniversary and it seems that beautification and celebration take priority over poor people’s well-being. If that’s the case, then we don’t see what is there to celebrate. This government promised “A better life for all.” Is taking bread out of poor peoples’ mouths a better life?
We call on the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, Town Clerk, Councillors, the Government of Guyana and all relevant authorities to immediately ensure that the vendors regain their livelihoods with compensation for their losses.
Yours faithfully,
Joy Marcus, Halima Khan, Wintress White, Joycelyn Bacchus, Vanessa Ross
For Red Thread
Susan Collymore, Norma Adrian
For Red Thread network, Grassroots Women Across Race
