What now appears to be a battle between the Georgetown municipality and the recently created Guyana Market Vendors Union (GMVU) for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the urban vending community is heating up in the wake of last week’s move by City Hall to formally register city vendors.
On Monday, President of the GMVU Eon Andrews told Stabroek Business that last Friday’s meeting, which was reportedly attended by more than 300 vendors and addressed by Town Clerk Royston King, was a thinly veiled attempt to smash the union given what he described as the “gradual but steady” interest being paid in the body by the vendors. “I am publicly restating the wish of the union to meet with the Town Clerk to talk about our relationship with the vendors,” Andrews said.
On Saturday, the Stabroek News reported that in the course of the City Hall meeting “over 300 vendors had been registered and had been issued with identification cards and a certificate.” King reportedly told the meeting that the move was intended to assist the council in monitoring the vendors in order to be able to better accommodate them when the City Council starts designing and constructing buildings to house them.
Andrews stated that the union’s membership was still growing and he described the move by City Hall “to register the vendors” as “nothing short of a hoax. It is a move to tighten the noose around vendors’ necks.” Andrews added that from City Hall’s perspective “control is the name of the game.
“I don’t think we have to try too hard to get the public to understand how deeply hated the bureaucrats at City Hall are by urban vendors. There is no way that there are 300 vendors who trust Royston King.”
Asked to account for the numbers who turned up for the Friday meeting, Andrews said he believed the vendors had responded “because they feel intimidated by City Hall and by Mr King.”
Since the establishment of the union last year, Andrews has tried without success to secure what he described as a “courtesy meeting” with King. “It seems as though King has now decided to try to smash the union,” Andrews said.
Asked whether it was not likely that there could be a loss of faith by the vendors in the union arising out of its inability, up to this time, to check the excesses of City Hall, Andrews said that as time passes the vendors, with the guidance of the union, will learn to represent themselves effectively. Meanwhile, he said that the union is seeking to intensify its lobby with government, the private sector and the trade union movement in an effort to nudge City Hall in the direction in accepting the legitimacy of the union.
Not least among the challenges confronting the GMVU is its precarious financial position and its attendant inability to establish an organized secretariat. Andrews said the scarcity of finances “continues to be a problem” but that the union was still “a far way from giving up.”
At last Saturday’s meeting, there was clear evidence of open hostility towards City Hall on the part of the vendors. As the ‘temperature’ in the meeting rose several vendors pilloried King and Mayor Patricia Chase-Green who, at times, appeared bewildered by the verbal attacks. The sub-standard services being provided by the council was one of the main bones of contention during the meeting.
Earlier this week, Stabroek Business spoke with at least four vendors who attended the meeting and each, in turn, declared that the most prominent feature of the gathering was the distrust that obtained between the vendors and the council. Clearly intimidated by what they believe is the high likelihood of reprisals that vendors acknowledged that City Hall’s style of management was about “threats and bullyism” and that people were scared because the municipality was holding their (the vendors’) livelihoods in their hands.
