Comment
The fact that it took a great deal of prodding and protestation and the eventual intervention of the Courts to cause the obscenity that passes for urban trading to impose itself on the country’s capital for ‘ages’, is a circumstance which, truth be told, ought to be a matter of embarrassment to both the state and the local authority.
Here, one hastens to add that the scourge of a capital that is, to a considerable extent, downright unsightly in the face of a protracted indifference to this reality by both Central Government and City Council cuts across political boundaries so that in the matter of bringing a measure of remedy to the situation there are no bragging rights here.
The Stabroek Business, however, hastens to add that there is nothing wrong with urban vending that is structured and controlled. These pursuits are part of everyday life in countries across the world and the strict regulating and monitoring procedures that attend this aspect of urban trading is designed to accommodate both the right of access of the traders to honest and livelihoods and the entitlement of the citizenry to a presentable capital.