Street ven­dors who ply their trade on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, be­tween Thurs­day to Sun­day will have to wait for six weeks be­fore re­turn­ing to their stalls as work­ers of the City Cor­po­ra­tion look to clean up the busy street.

This was the word of Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, who con­firmed that the con­tract for vend­ing on the street ex­pired on De­cem­ber 31.

He ex­plained that the de­ci­sion to keep them off the street was part of a plan to re­ha­bil­i­tate Char­lotte Street, one of many ar­eas in Port- of- Spain ear­marked for work.

“We will take that six weeks to get the street back to a state of readi­ness,” said Mar­tinez in a an in­ter­view.” The may­or said with the ven­dors’ pres­ence on the street, the cor­po­ra­tion could not re­al­ly ser­vice the road prop­er­ly.

When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Char­lotte Street yes­ter­day it was main­ly clear with on­ly one pro­duce ven­dor sell­ing items along the road­way.

Some 129 ven­dors were is­sued con­tracts in April to vend on the street/ Mar­tinez said the City Cor­po­ra­tion was look­ing over the hap­pen­ings of the past year to see what can be im­proved.

Mar­tinez said while there was no ex­ten­sion to vend­ing at this time, he did of­fer an ex­ten­sion to ven­dors to set­tle out­stand­ing rent.

Mar­tinez al­so con­firmed that 30 new con­sta­bles were brought in­to the City Po­lice to aid with il­le­gal vend­ing in the city.

The may­or said he hoped to make Port-of-Spain a clean­er city in 2019 as the cor­po­ra­tion start­ed do­ing clean-up ex­er­cis­es at the home­less cen­tre at the River­side Plaza car park.

Mar­tinez said the cor­po­ra­tion was al­so look­ing to do work on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade.