Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Ven­dors op­er­at­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Ven­dors’ Mall have ex­pressed anger over a de­ci­sion by May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed to clear the site.

The ven­dors were al­lo­cat­ed the lo­ca­tion near­ly 15 years ago af­ter then Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er in­ter­vened and fa­cil­i­tat­ed their use of the for­mer Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre to ply their trade. The ini­tia­tive be­gan with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 ven­dors; to­day, around 30 re­main, op­er­at­ing from makeshift gal­vanised huts.

On Fri­day, the may­or an­nounced that the area would be cleared to make way for a traf­fic hub aimed at eas­ing con­ges­tion in the busy cen­tral bor­ough. He said ven­dors have un­til March 31 to re­move their struc­tures, af­ter which de­mo­li­tion will be­gin.

Mo­hammed said the move forms part of a broad­er plan to es­tab­lish a struc­tured trans­port hub at the lo­ca­tion. He stressed that the de­ci­sion was not ar­bi­trary but aligned with a wider strat­e­gy to im­prove traf­fic flow, en­hance pub­lic safe­ty, in­crease com­muter com­fort and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the bor­ough.

“Ch­agua­nas is grow­ing, and with growth comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” the may­or said. “We can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in a man­ner that cre­ates con­ges­tion, dis­or­der and long-term risk. We must plan prop­er­ly, build prop­er­ly and man­age our space prop­er­ly.”

He con­firmed that ven­dors had been for­mal­ly no­ti­fied of the March 31 dead­line and that the process would be or­der­ly and clear­ly de­fined, with de­mo­li­tion sched­uled to be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­ward.

Mo­hammed sought to re­as­sure those af­fect­ed that al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments had been made. Ven­dors have been of­fered booths on the up­per lev­el of the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket, with six months rent-free. He de­scribed the pro­pos­al as a “struc­tured, fair and sup­port­ive tran­si­tion pack­age” in­tend­ed to pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty, op­por­tu­ni­ty and suf­fi­cient time for ad­just­ment.

Ven­dors, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the up­per lev­el of the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket at­tracts lit­tle cus­tomer traf­fic. They de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as out­dat­ed, lack­ing es­ca­la­tors, lifts, air con­di­tion­ing and oth­er fea­tures as­so­ci­at­ed with a mod­ern shop­ping com­plex.

Mon­i­ca Franklyn, who has op­er­at­ed at the site since its in­cep­tion, called for in­ter­ven­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter. She ac­cused the may­or of be­ing an­ti-busi­ness, claim­ing that trade in Ch­agua­nas had de­clined un­der his lead­er­ship.