Dear Editor,
Relative to an article in the Guyana Chronicle newspaper of Wednesday, November 20, 2019, ‘All clear for seasonal city vendors’, the Guyana Market Vendors Union (GMVU) is cognisant of the fact that such an activity is traditional at this time of the year and is meant to allow vendors, inclusive of seasonal vendors, to be able to share in the expected windfall.
However, the union has some concerns as to how this year-end activity is being administered. It should be noted that up to 2018, venders were required to pay according to the type of goods being sold, as per pallet space (1 pallet = 4 feet). It goes as follows: groceries (1 pallet space) $5,000 per week; (bread pallet space) $3,000 per week; watches and shades (1 pallet space) $2,500 per week; clothing, etc. (1 pallet space) $2,000 per week. If one needs or can afford more than one pallet space, if available, the cost is multiplied by that number.
Here is where the small vendor is at a disadvantage, whereby, very large stallholders, on account of their affluence, gobble up large swaths of the vending area opposite their stalls irrespective of the cost to acquire same, colluding with council officials on the ground. What is also disheartening is that many poor and wannabe seasonal vendors will never get a chance to do so and their desire to get some Christmas necessities and goodies for their families and relatives will never be realised.
It should be noted that in 2019, the space has become smaller but more expensive in that one can no longer get a pallet space (four feet). It is now reduced (three feet) with no spaces in between stalls to allow for ingress and egress. That three-foot space now costs $2,500 or $3,000 per week. Pallets being four feet, it is now obvious that the pallet will project beyond the three feet line so that one has no choice but to pay for two spaces, that is, $6,000 per week or $24,000 per month. At $2,500 per week ($10,000 per month) and $3,000 per week ($12,000 per month), this is an amount these one-time and small vendors can ill afford; they are also faced with the fierce competition of the yuletide season.
The amount aforementioned will be close to or even more than what the large established stalls and some stores pay regularly per month. There is also a large store in Longden and America streets that encumbers the entire pavement with seasonal goods so that persons have no choice but to use the dangerous vehicular roadway to traverse. One condition for selling in those little cubicles is that the vender must use no form of overhead protection, not even an umbrella. They and their goods are easy prey for the elements.
The proletariat in this country is indeed an endangered species. If the powerful private sector or the manufacturing association express any concern, there is an immediate response from the powers that be, but the small stallholders and vendors are never consulted as their will and moreso, their survival, is often brutally challenged.
The mayor is made to believe through his officers that the disgruntled small vendors are but a few, which is not true. It is either that they are lying to him or are bent on making him look bad.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that the large affluent stallholders at Stabroek Market, among others, are not loyal or committed to anything but are saturated with ingrained greed while loyalty and commitment to a cause or ideal lies deep in the bosom of this army of small vendors. They just need to know that someone cares and I hope those people are listening.
Yours faithfully,
Eon Andrews
President
Guyana Market Vendors Union