President Irfaan Ali yesterday met with scores of Parika Market vendors who were put out of business by a major fire on Friday and while no official information was forthcoming on the discussions, some of the attendees said they were offered a sum of $300,000.
The meeting yesterday came amid growing questions about where liability for the fire lay and where compensation should come from.
Two vendors who wished to remain anonymous told Stabroek News that a sum of $300,000 was offered to each of them. However, for vendors with huge losses, they will be facilitated with access to bank loans.
Senior Minister within the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh; Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand; Minister of Local Government, Nigel Dharamlall and Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar were also at the meeting.
Vendors related that on the day of the fire it was chaotic since the sea breeze propelled the fire to various parts of the market within minutes. Squib-like explosions were heard and this was followed by huge clouds of black smoke. Vendors were unable to retrieve valuables and goods, the massive fire consumed everything. Many vendors also stated that vending was their main source of income. The fire swept through the Parika Market complex and later ravaged the stalls on the roadside.
Water tenders from the Leonora, La Grange, Eccles, Campbellville, Central and West Ruimveldt fire stations responded to the call. The Essequibo River was also used as an open water source.
The Guyana Fire Service on Sunday confirmed that the cause of the fire was as a result of residue from a welding torch that fell into a storage bond and ignited nearby combustible materials.
There are growing questions of what will become of the Parika Market and who should be held liable for the fire. The market was in the second phase of $300m worth of works which have all gone up in flames. The project came under the Ministry of Local Government. It is unclear whether the contractor carried insurance for these purposes and whether he would be held liable for sparking the blaze.
The vendors are also seeking answers as to what are the future plans for the complex.
On Friday, fifty-four-year-old Meena Rampersaud and her 35-year-old daughter said that they were standing at their stall when they heard “squib noises” and suddenly saw fire coming from a stall in the market which was located right under where the men were working on the roof of the complex. She said that after the fire erupted, the fire service took some time to reach the location.
“The carpenter went up top that building right, like them went doing some kinda welding and the welding, well you know you does get spark from it and apparently it pitched in the people them stand, the stand was like a tall wooden and white building and it pitched in the stall and like the people had fireworks and it come in contact with it and this thing start fuh go off like ‘Bow! Bow!’ like squib noises and from deh the fire start… when everybody see that, everybody start fuh cry and the police them just come and order we to move and we couldn’t get to save anything…this fire truck like it came like three hours after and it barely had water, like them only come with one black tank of water because when them start spray, the water finished just like that and they couldn’t able out the fire on the road much less the fire in the market. They tek a good while to out the fire and even unto now the fire nah out properly…”, she said.
Rampersaud said that she owned two stalls, one located along the road side and the other which she used to store her goods was located in the market complex, and she has since estimated her loss to be in the millions. “My stall burn down flat, flat on the road… I used to sell all kinds of thing from clothes to snacks to everything… and then we have another stall in the market itself where we used to store whatever we used to sell because we does can’t bring out all in front and even to that burn down, is two stands burn down one fuh me and one fuh me daughter… me lost plenty, millions in dollars because we had plenty things and we used to sell everything that you could think about.”
The woman who has been a vendor since the age of eleven said that vending was the only source of income and that she’s now stuck with two loans to repay which she had borrowed to build her business. “This is the work I do for my living, I don’t depend on nothing else but this selling, I have loan to pay and I have debts to pay, we tek the loan to build the stall and build we business and I can’t do nothing now…we gah get help we gah get something because how we go start back?” asked a visibly distraught Rampersaud.
Rohan Lall, on the other hand, could not estimate his losses but opined that it was “plenty.” Although he was devastated by the incident, he was also disappointed by passersby who took the opportunity to steal many of the vendors’ products.
“When I was approaching coming towards my stall I saw the fire in the market centre and as such the fire now is getting more outrageous with the breeze and the building start to burn, noises, sounds like fireworks like been going off… so people immediately start evacuating and stuff, taking out them stuff from the market centre… and then we start helping people now to save their items… fire get more alarming and more terrible and start burning the end stalls… then we stuff start scorching then we had to end up now leaving people because we had to go save ours. Then people thiefing the goods too, so we lost a lot of goods that scorched and burn up in the fire too… we have losses, we have people thief things from us cause same time you try to help people out, people try to thief from you also”, he said.
