Kevon Felmine

Clogged toi­lets, ro­dent in­fes­ta­tions and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices are among the com­plaints from ven­dors about the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SRC). Claim­ing po­lit­i­cal and racial vic­tim­i­sa­tion, sev­er­al of the mar­ket ven­dors, who spoke to re­porters in front of the mar­ket yes­ter­day, called for changes that will help them to make an hon­est dol­lar.

Pork ven­dor Gas­ton Bap­tiste said five days be­fore Christ­mas the SRC placed No Park­ing signs on an ac­cess road to the mar­ket, tak­ing park­ing spots away from cus­tomers. As a re­sult, sales de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Bap­tiste said the re­frig­er­a­tor at the mar­ket has not worked for the past eight years and ven­dors are some­times forced to dump meat that spoiled.

He said al­though he has writ­ten let­ters and spo­ken with coun­cil­lors, the SRC has not done any­thing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion.

Lu­cille Dick­son said on Sun­days, which is mar­ket day in Siparia, many cus­tomers used to park in front of the build­ing. Now they go else­where where park­ing is avail­able.

She said some ven­dors have stopped sell­ing at the mar­ket be­cause of de­clin­ing sales and poor vend­ing con­di­tions. 

Dick­son said the on­ly work­ing fe­male toi­let is fre­quent­ed by drug ad­dicts and women feel un­safe us­ing it. She said she goes to the mar­ket with a bot­tle of dis­in­fect­ing liq­uid to clean be­fore us­ing. 

An­oth­er ven­dor, Kert Gue­vara, claimed peo­ple from oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties got mul­ti­ple stalls in the mar­ket while res­i­dents had to wait for years to be al­lo­cat­ed space to vend. The SRC’s ex­cuse is that there are no spaces. 

“I do not know if it is crim­i­nals they want peo­ple to be be­cause I plant and sell, and when I can­not come and make mon­ey to sup­port my­self and my fam­i­ly, what do they want me to do?” he asked.

SRC chair­man Den­ish Sankers­ingh said he was aware of con­cerns raised by one ven­dor which had no mer­it. He said one par­tic­u­lar ven­dor has a build­ing in front of the mar­ket and us­es the ac­cess road as pri­vate park­ing for that busi­ness.

He said many of the ven­dors owe be­tween $1,500 and $2,000 in un­paid rent and since they pay $40 per month for a stall, it means they have not paid the SRC for sev­er­al years.