SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Ari­ma May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian is urg­ing the pub­lic to stop steal­ing the clean­ing agents be­ing dis­pensed at the Ari­ma Mar­ket to help them sani­tise against COVID-19 while us­ing the fa­cil­i­ty.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian yes­ter­day told the Guardian Me­dia that dis­in­fec­tant, hand sani­tis­ers, soap and toi­let pa­per placed in the mar­ket’s wash­rooms for cus­tomers and ven­dors has been dis­ap­pear­ing dai­ly. She ap­pealed to the thieves to de­sist, say­ing the pop­u­la­tion was be­ing urged to prac­tice prop­er hy­giene to pre­vent the virus’ spread and their self­ish and un­car­ing ac­tions could ex­pose peo­ple to risks.

“You put down a roll of toi­let pa­per and it’s gone... gal­lons of soap gone ... hand sani­tis­er gone. We are ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to think of oth­ers,” Mor­ris-Ju­lian said.

The may­or said the mar­ket had to be tem­porar­i­ly closed and sani­tised last week af­ter a ven­dor dis­played flu-like symp­toms. Tests sub­se­quent­ly re­vealed the male ven­dor was COVID-19 free and the mar­ket re­sumed op­er­a­tions. She said the ven­dor has been de­barred from re-en­ter­ing the mar­ket un­til he can present a fit to work cer­tifi­cate, but the cor­po­ra­tion has tak­en steps to sani­tise the mar­ket dai­ly.

The mar­ket was one of sev­er­al across the coun­try re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing long lines of cus­tomers wait­ing to pur­chase mar­ket pro­duce. There was some chaos at some of the mar­ket venues and Mor­ris-Julien was one of the may­ors who had to call out the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice to re­store law and or­der.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian ad­mit­ted that while the ma­jor­i­ty of its 200-plus ven­dors have been buy­ing and us­ing their own hand sani­tis­ers and clean­ing agents but oth­ers want this to be pro­vid­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion.

“We are spend­ing every­thing that we have to make sure that our burgess­es are safe. But some peo­ple have to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty... the cor­po­ra­tion be­lieves that every­one should be re­spon­si­ble for the mar­ket spaces they oc­cu­py.”

The ven­dors pay the cor­po­ra­tion $3 a day to utilise their stalls.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said they have been tak­ing the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the health and safe­ty of cit­i­zens come first.

“So far we have spent over $200,000 on ma­te­ri­als alone and like most com­pa­nies we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing what I would call stock shrink­age.”

The pur­chased items in­clude per­son­al pro­tec­tion equip­ment (PPE), hand sani­tis­ers, liq­uid soap and bleach for the cor­po­ra­tion’s 450 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, 87 mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, 150 san­i­ta­tion em­ploy­ees and 141 ad­min­is­tra­tive staff.

She said the cor­po­ra­tion has al­so been proac­tive by turn­ing the bench­es in the parks up­side down to dis­suade peo­ple from con­gre­gat­ing but some in­di­vid­u­als have been ven­tur­ing in to have pic­nics and fun, putting oth­ers at risk.

“We should not be telling grown folks to stay home and what to do. They ought to know bet­ter,” she said.