SASCHA WIL­SON

Mar­ket ven­dors are ap­peal­ing to San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo to al­low them to con­tin­ue to leave their goods at the mar­ket overnight.

How­ev­er, Re­grel­lo has re­ject­ed their re­quest, say­ing he has de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue this prac­tice be­cause the mar­ket is in­fest­ed with cock­roach­es and rats.

Voic­ing their con­cern at the Cen­tral Mar­ket at Mu­cu­rapo Street yes­ter­day, the ven­dors said it is not fea­si­ble for them to trans­port their goods to and from home every day that they op­er­ate at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Stall own­er Visham Ma­habir said yes­ter­day that more than 100 ven­dors are be­ing af­fect­ed. He said they were pre­vi­ous­ly al­lowed to leave the goods at the mar­ket but last Tues­day the mar­ket clerk told them they need­ed to va­cate the premis­es and re­move their goods by 4 pm that day. He said about six of the ven­dors were un­able to re­move their goods and they were even­tu­al­ly dumped by the cor­po­ra­tion.

“When we came back to the mar­ket on Thurs­day we were no­ti­fied by the mar­ket clerk that we not al­lowed to leave any­thing in the mar­ket. Every sin­gle day af­ter we sell, we have to re­move all the items from the mar­ket. When we ask the mar­ket clerk why we can’t leave it, he said we have to leave it at our own risk.”

Ma­habir said yes­ter­day they were told that any goods left in the mar­ket will be dumped be­cause they want to sani­tise the fa­cil­i­ty, in­clud­ing the stalls, due to COVID-19. Usu­al­ly, he said, on­ly the ground would be sprayed dai­ly.

The ven­dors, how­ev­er, are propos­ing that the stalls be cleaned once a month.

“Give us prop­er no­tice, re­move every­thing and you all can clean down the place, be­cause as it is now most peo­ple in the mar­ket, they not able to bring their pro­duce to the mar­ket and take it out be­cause they don’t have a ve­hi­cle, they don’t have the man­pow­er.”

As a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion, he said on­ly 20 per cent of ven­dors came out to work yes­ter­day. The ven­dors say they are prepar­ing to send a pe­ti­tion to the may­or ask­ing him to con­sid­er their pro­pos­al.

An­oth­er stall own­er, Emar­son Passe, said they were will­ing to abide by all mea­sures to bat­tle COVID-19 but the lat­est de­ci­sion was un­fair to ven­dors.

How­ev­er, Re­grel­lo said the de­ci­sion was based on a re­port from the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment fol­low­ing last Tues­day’s in­spec­tion of the mar­ket. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the stalls were in­fest­ed with Ger­man cock­roach­es and there was an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dis­used ma­te­ri­als at the stalls (card­board box­es, sty­ro­foam crates etc) har­bour­ing cock­roach­es.

“You have cock­roach­es, rats and ro­dents run­ning all over the mar­ket. Leav­ing the goods overnight is putting the pub­lic at risk and we might have to deal with an­oth­er kind of health cri­sis,” Re­grel­lo said.

Asked why the de­ci­sion was on­ly tak­en now, he ad­mit­ted that they were “loose” but said the com­pre­hen­sive clean­ing done last week due to COVID-19 ex­posed the sit­u­a­tion and he had to take ac­tion based on the re­port. Re­grel­lo said while it was un­for­tu­nate the ven­dors were be­ing in­con­ve­nienced, they would have “to find ways to nav­i­gate the sit­u­a­tion.”