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Monday, February 24, 2025

Crackdown on delinquent Chaguanas market vendors owing $1.4M in rent

by

Rhondor Dowlat
803 days ago
20221214
File: The inside of the Chaguanas Market.

File: The inside of the Chaguanas Market.

EDISON BOODOOSINGH

RHON­DOR DOWLAT

The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion is owed more than $1 mil­lion on stall rental fees by ven­dors op­er­at­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the ven­dors who are re­quired to pay a rental fee of $5 a day have not made pay­ments since be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Some ven­dors owe over $15,000 in rent as far back as May 2014.

*Ven­dors on the ground floor with fruits and veg­etable stalls/posts, are ow­ing $884,925;

*Fish ven­dors (15) owe $66,600;

*Salt meat ven­dors owe $3,750;

*Tripe ven­dors owe $9,400;

*Beef ven­dors owe $14,000;

*Pork ven­dors owe $63,000;

*Crab ven­dors owe $20,400;

*Food ven­dors owe $20,750;

*Car park food booths ven­dors owe $23,500;

*Dry Goods ven­dors owe $92,750;

*Clothes & hab­er­dash­ery ven­dors owe $160,700;

*Craft sec­tion owe $7,600;

*Food (first floor) owe $15,750;

*Open Area Food Court (first floor) owe $12,000.

These monies owed to­talled $1,395,125 as of Oc­to­ber 2022.

May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed said the cor­po­ra­tion will be mak­ing ef­forts to re­cov­er the monies owed.

Mo­hammed said he had heard through the grapevine that some ven­dors claimed they will not be pay­ing the cor­po­ra­tion, how­ev­er, he said the nec­es­sary ac­tions will be tak­en in­clud­ing pos­si­ble evic­tion.

"It is a mas­sive debt. It's over a mil­lion dol­lars and the cor­po­ra­tion has passed a res­o­lu­tion where we will be do­ing some­thing called a debt col­lec­tion," Mo­hammed said.

He in­di­cat­ed that the debt-col­lec­tion ex­er­cise was de­layed as T&T was re­cov­er­ing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. "Due to COVID, we did not want to press the ven­dors as much. How­ev­er, this com­ing year, as we are out of the pan­dem­ic and out of this COVID strain, we will look to im­ple­ment such a col­lec­tion.

"We have a hu­man side with re­spect to this col­lec­tion...we will do it via a pay­ment plan and work with the ven­dors to de­crease this debt," Mo­hammed said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, once the mil­lion-dol­lar debt is col­lect­ed the monies will be rein­vest­ed in­to the mar­ket. "We will in­vest this in­to the mar­ket be­cause from time to time you would hear mar­ket ven­dors com­plain­ing about the fa­cil­i­ty be­ing run down. If we were to col­lect this we would have every­one up to stan­dard and com­fort­able for cus­tomers and ven­dors."

Asked if there were any moves to raise rental fees in the fu­ture, Mo­hammed said no as they are stan­dard rates as list­ed in the act.

Chaguanas Borough Corporation


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