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Monday, April 28, 2025

Street vendors blamed for slow sales in South

by

20121223

It's al­ready the eve of Christ­mas but San Fer­nan­do busi­ness own­ers say sales are yet to pick up. They are blam­ing it on the in­flux of street ven­dors. And as con­sumers come out it do last-minute shop­ping, re­tail­ers don't ex­pect sales to get any bet­ter. Many busi­ness own­ers de­clined to say much about the street vend­ing in San Fer­nan­do, claim­ing that when they spoke on the mat­ter pre­vi­ous­ly, their busi­ness­es were van­dalised.

One busi­ness woman, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said: "You have an open flea mar­ket on High Street where peo­ple can sell from chives, cel­ery, com­ing right down to gold, di­a­monds, shoes or any­thing you want, you can get it for sale on the streets. Shop­pers can hard­ly pass on the pave­ment to get in­to a store. It is like mas con­fu­sion in our city."

When peo­ple leave places like Trinci­ty and Ari­ma to shop in San Fer­nan­do, they want to shop in com­fort, she said. How­ev­er, ram­pant street vend­ing has de­nied them the op­por­tu­ni­ty as there is no pave­ment to walk on and lots of garbage on the streets. She said if the au­thor­i­ties want to have a law­ful so­ci­ety, they must en­force the law.

But street ven­dors were not the on­ly cause iden­ti­fied for slow sales. Oth­ers said the prob­lem was the down­turn in the econ­o­my. Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett said sales have been slow­er than 2011. "Sales have been ex­treme­ly slow, prob­a­bly even slow­er than pro­ject­ed. We have pro­ject­ed that it would be 25 per cent slow­er than last year but it is prob­a­bly 30 to 35 per cent.

"There are sev­er­al rea­sons; we have the down­turn in the econ­o­my and few­er peo­ple are em­ployed," Bartlett said. She said even though there are peo­ple shop­ping, they are not buy­ing much, as ev­i­denced by the small num­ber of shop­ping bags they are walk­ing around with.

She said the park and ride im­ple­ment­ed by San Fer­nan­do may­or Dr Navi Mu­radali has helped with the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion but the bus does not run as fre­quent­ly as need­ed. When the Guardian walked through a crowd­ed High Street, it was a grid­lock as usu­al, with few po­lice or traf­fic war­dens in sight.

How­ev­er, not every­one agreed that street ven­dors were draw­ing sales away from es­tab­lished busi­ness­es. Sarah Du­lal of Rook­lal Jew­el­ers said street ven­dors ac­tu­al­ly brought a crowd on­to the street, which in­di­rect­ly as­sists their busi­ness. "Hav­ing the ven­dors here is good be­cause there are bring a crowd to the streets," she said.

How­ev­er, she too ad­mits that sales for this year's Christ­mas sea­son could have been bet­ter. "Its not that busy but it has its mo­ments. It could have been bet­ter, though. It is slow­er than last year and I guess peo­ple don't have mon­ey to spend," Du­lal said. De­sign­er per­fume sales­man Win­ston Mooliesingh, who on­ly sells on the streets for Christ­mas, said sales has been bet­ter than last year, es­pe­cial­ly since they have been al­lowed to stay on the street.

Mu­radali had ini­tial­ly planned to move the street ven­dors on­to Har­ris Prom­e­nade, how­ev­er, that plan nev­er got on the way. Mooliesingh said peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly shop­ping more this year. His col­league, Rudolph "Cold Drinks" Seer­aj said the rea­son why busi­ness­es suf­fered, was the no-park­ing re­stric­tion in the shop­ping ar­eas. He said peo­ple pre­ferred to shop in the con­ve­nience of Gulf City Mall while those walk­ing the streets would rather pa­tro­n­ise the street ven­dors be­cause of good bar­gains.

Lyn­don Mc Clashie, who spent most of Sat­ur­day shop­ping with his chil­dren, said even though he is buy­ing, there weren't many peo­ple do­ing the same. As he went through var­i­ous stores, he said those with the biggest crowds were toys out­lets.


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