JENSEN LA VENDE

Ven­dors at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, are will­ing to take the Gov­ern­ment to court af­ter they were or­dered to va­cate the area to al­low prepa­ra­tion for the Memo­r­i­al Day pro­ces­sion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Culi­nary Am­bas­sadors (AL­CA) Michael Williams said the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture wrote him on Oc­to­ber 22 re­quest­ing that he and his 62 mem­bers leave from mid­night to­mor­row to 4.30 pm on No­vem­ber 10.

The two-page let­ter said the ven­dors need­ed to va­cate the area for prepa­ra­tions for the Memo­r­i­al Day pro­ces­sion on No­vem­ber 10 to take place.

Williams de­scribed the re­quest as “po­lit­i­cal bul­ly­ing” and vowed not to ad­here to it.

“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.”

Williams said in the past he and the ven­dors glad­ly va­cat­ed the area the day be­fore Memo­r­i­al Day, even pow­er wash­ing the area at their own cost. He said the week­long or­der is non­sen­si­cal as the ven­dors op­er­ate af­ter 5.30 pm and the pro­posed prac­tice will take place dur­ing the day.

He said when he en­quired why the ven­dors must leave for the week, he was re­port­ed­ly told that it was a de­ci­sion made by a com­mit­tee at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

Williams stressed that the ven­dors were not squat­ting but hads a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry to vend.

“We def­i­nite­ly will con­tin­ue vend­ing each day, as is said in the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing. We will cease at mid­night be­fore the cer­e­mo­ny when they have the pa­rade, and we will give them their space. As far as try­ing to bul­ly us in­to stay­ing home, we are not go­ing to do it. Why should the au­thor­i­ties come now and tell us to stay home for no jus­ti­fied rea­son? This is what you call bul­ly­ing, you want a de­f­i­n­i­tion of po­lit­i­cal bul­ly­ing, this is it.”

Williams said if he and his mem­bers were made to leave, he would take le­gal ac­tion against the state for loss of earn­ings for each ven­dor and their em­ploy­ees.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein, as well as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Avinash Singh on the mat­ter, but nei­ther re­spond­ed.