Re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als from Pres­i­dent’s House and oth­er State agen­cies will soon be used to con­struct a roof at the Ari­ma Mar­ket.

Con­fir­ma­tion came yes­ter­day from Ari­ma May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian as 300 ven­dors get set to shift from the mar­ket to a near­by open carpark to make way for a roof.

Promis­ing ven­dors they will suf­fer lit­tle in­con­ve­nience, Mor­ris-Ju­lian told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that work on the roof will be­gin af­ter Car­ni­val and will be de­liv­ered in un­der 60 days.

Once com­plet­ed it will ac­com­mo­date 500 ven­dors- 200 more than what it cur­rent­ly hous­es.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als ob­tained from var­i­ous gov­ern­ment projects will be used to con­struct the roof.

“ I am not sure where all of the ma­te­r­i­al is be­ing out­sourced from.”

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that some ma­te­ri­als were sourced from the re­cent­ly re­stored $89 mil­lion Pres­i­dent’s House.

She said Ude­cott will be the project man­ag­er for the roof­ing project.

“The last time we had an es­ti­mat­ed cost to re­place the roof was $5 mil­lion. That was about five years ago. So we are very grate­ful and hap­py for the ma­te­ri­als. It is sav­ing us a lot of mon­ey. We have been try­ing to push Ari­ma as be­ing a town for re­cy­cling, reusing and re­duc­ing. This fits in quite nice­ly with our vi­sion.”

The roof will take up the en­tire cir­cum­fer­ence of the out­door mar­ket.

“What it is we are aim­ing for, is that, when we start to build the new mar­ket that will be the roof. It is ba­si­cal­ly what we will work with. We start­ing from the top and work­ing our way down.”

The cor­po­ra­tion’s vi­sion is to build a two-storey mar­ket for Ari­ma.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said the ven­dors and CEO met to dis­cuss the new move and every­body is on the same page.

“Every­one was hap­py and in agree­ment. And we all looked for­ward to the cov­er­ing of the open­ing mar­ket. But of course, some peo­ple want to be in the mar­ket every day....24 hours a day and we can­not ac­com­mo­date those peo­ple.”

She said sell­ing be­yond the mar­ket’s stip­u­lat­ed time was against the cor­po­ra­tion’s rules.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian gave the as­sur­ance that the cor­po­ra­tion will not im­pose a hike on the rental of their stall.

“Fret not your­selves. The mar­ket stall prices will re­main the same and this roof will en­sure that we re­move all the tents, pieces of old wood, gal­vanise and will be able to clean week­ly in­stead of twice month­ly. We want uni­for­mi­ty.”