Kevon Felmine

Al­though street ven­dors were giv­en des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas to sell for the Christ­mas sea­son, down­town San Fer­nan­do was tran­formed in­to a flea mar­ket with stalls par­tial­ly block­ing store en­trances, pave­ments and the road.As a re­sult, says San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Daphne Bartlett, stores suf­fered a 30 per cent de­crease in sales for the Christ­mas sea­son, ten per cent more than they had pro­ject­ed.

"Sales for the year 2013 has been very poor. It is the worst since I have been in busi­ness, which is over two decades. It has seen a 30 per cent drop over last year's sales, and one of the prob­lems we've been hav­ing over the last few days is the con­ver­sion of High Street in­to a flea mar­ket," Bartlett said."We have to look at the in­flux of peo­ple out­side of the city who come to San Fer­nan­do, High Street, to ply their trade.

"What I have been told by ven­dors is that a lot of peo­ple who do not live in Trinidad come to the coun­try to ply a trade for Christ­mas. So those are things that we have to look at."This comes on the heels of an agree­ment be­tween the SF­BA and the San Fer­nan­do Street Ven­dors As­so­ci­a­tion that vend­ing would be done on­ly at three al­lo­cat­ed ar­eas along one side of High Street.

But when the Guardian news team toured the busy street on Christ­mas Eve, there were many new faces sell­ing on the pave­ments and road on both sides. Many last-minute shop­pers were busi­ly grab­bing the bar­gains on the out­side, while stores, es­pe­cial­ly those in­side malls, were sparse­ly pa­tro­n­ised.

Bar­lett ex­plained, "What­ev­er is avail­able in the stores is avail­able out­side on the streets, so it is easy buy­ing. For the shop­pers who would usu­al­ly come to the city to buy things once a year, they would find it very con­gest­ed and would not want to en­ter the city."We did not agree to this, we did not agree for a flea mar­ket on High Street. We agreed for a part of High Street to be giv­en to the ven­dors."This is telling you that the law was not up­held, and who is re­spon­si­ble for that?"

In re­sponse, San Fer­nan­do may­or Kaz­im Ho­sein said there was a prob­lem in polic­ing street ven­dors over the past week.He said when he called last Sat­ur­day to ask for an in­creased pres­ence of mu­nic­i­pal po­lice on the streets, he was told there were on­ly two of­fi­cers on du­ty, and a re­quest to the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for in­creased man­pow­er for the Christ­mas sea­son was not met.In ad­di­tion, he said many of the street ven­dors who set up stalls out­side the des­ig­nat­ed vend­ing ar­eas were unau­tho­rised ven­dors.

While store own­ers on High Street, Mu­cu­rapo Street and St James Street strug­gled to sell their goods, hun­dreds of last-minute shop­pers flocked to Gulf City Mall.