JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Culi­nary Am­bas­sadors (AL­CA) and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture have agreed to a tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of ven­dors at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, AL­CA pres­i­dent Michael Williams said the min­istry had scrapped its orig­i­nal de­ci­sion to block 60 ven­dors from be­ing al­lowed to op­er­ate at the lo­ca­tion this week to al­low the mil­i­tary to pre­pare for the Memo­r­i­al Day com­mem­o­ra­tion.

Williams said as an al­ter­na­tive, the min­istry had now agreed to al­low the ven­dors to shift from Queen’s Park East, op­po­site Memo­r­i­al Park, to Queen’s Park South, op­po­site Vic­to­ria Av­enue. Ad­di­tion­al light­ing and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties will be pro­vid­ed by the min­istry, he said.

Last Fri­day, Williams said he and his ven­dors had planned to de­fy an or­der from the min­istry stop­ping them from vend­ing for a week, and even promised to take the State to court if they were forced to do so. He said the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture wrote him on Oc­to­ber 22 re­quest­ing that he and his 62 mem­bers leave from mid­night yes­ter­day to No­vem­ber 10.

Williams de­scribed the re­quest as “po­lit­i­cal bul­ly­ing.”

“As pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, I am not go­ing to car­ry out this kind of wicked, vin­dic­tive or­der for no ap­par­ent rea­son. You want to lay some wreaths for some dead men who dead 100 years ago. I re­spect the fact that you want to have a cer­e­mo­ny for them, all re­spect to that but don’t op­press the liv­ing to ho­n­our the dead,” he said then.

He said in the past, his mem­bers had va­cat­ed the area for 24 hours to al­low the mil­i­tary pa­rade but a week-long re­moval was ex­ces­sive.