Con­struc­tion of new mar­ket stalls at the Mara­bel­la Mar­ket has been sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing a meet­ing yes­ter­day be­tween protest­ing ven­dors and the city’s en­gi­neer­ing per­son­nel.

As the bustling week­end loomed ahead, the ven­dors, led by Pres­i­dent of the Mara­bel­la Mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion Tim Bhag­wan­deen, man­aged to bro­ker a deal with the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion. They agreed that if the cor­po­ra­tion tem­porar­i­ly sus­pends the project and al­lows them to con­tin­ue vend­ing un­in­ter­rupt­ed this week­end, they will cease their protests and in­stead pro­vide a list of their con­cerns and rec­om­men­da­tions to the cor­po­ra­tion.

The ven­dors have been op­posed to the re­duc­tion of the ex­ist­ing stall space and cor­ri­dor ar­eas say­ing the new stalls will be a health and safe­ty haz­ard.

“We were nev­er con­sult­ed on this. A re­duc­tion in space is a health haz­ard and a se­cu­ri­ty is­sue for us. We will not have walk­ing space, and if there is an emer­gency, this will be a prob­lem for us,” Bhag­wan­deen ex­plained.

He com­plained about in­ad­e­quate light­ing, non-func­tion­al toi­lets, and an in­ac­ces­si­ble car park due to over­grown veg­e­ta­tion.

“About 20 lights are not work­ing,” he lament­ed.

In re­sponse to these chal­lenges, he put for­ward a se­ries of rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ing the paving of the car park.

“If this is done, ven­dors can park there and they will not park in the mar­ket. This will cre­ate ad­di­tion­al space for about 100 more stalls around the sides, front, and rear of the mar­ket,” Bhag­wan­deen said.

An­oth­er ven­dor, Al­lana Pan­cham called for the cor­po­ra­tion to fix the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice De­part­ment of­fice lo­cat­ed in the mar­ket.

“Every­body knows that Mara­bel­la is a crime-rid­dled area; the ven­dors come here at their own risk. When the po­lice leave us, every­body has to fend for them­selves,” she said.

Act­ing as­sis­tant en­gi­neer Richard Ram­per­sad who met with the ven­dors, as­sured them that the project would be tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed to al­low for dis­cus­sions.

He said the project aimed to stan­dard­ise the mar­ket stalls in Mara­bel­la by im­ple­ment­ing a pro­to­type sim­i­lar to the one in the Cen­tral Mar­ket in Port-of-Spain.