The Christmas Day celebration has gone, but the season and two major problems, street vending and vagrancy will continue with widespread causes and consequences. The leaders in city and regional corporations are understanding and lenient during seasonal periods such as Christmas.
Then, central and local government bodies are weakened by the cries of vendors “that we just trying to make an honest dollar to mine we children” when they are being removed from the streets by the police.
The reality with vending is that it squeezes central parts of Port of Spain, San Fernando, Chaguanas and to a lesser extent, Arima, Point Fortin and Scarborough into small, congested spaces with the unavoidable appearance of shanties.
There, pedestrians jostle with sellers, buyers, the curious and others in a fight for breathing space and the inevitable security concerns.
The established merchants complain bitterly about the blockages of their establishments by the vendors who set up their stalls indiscriminately in their own interests. Then there is the unfortunate mix of vagrancy and vending. In the instance of the latter, the human toll, made visible in the circumstances, must be painful to citizens concerned about the deteriorating condition of hundreds, if not thousands of human beings.
Vagrancy being a result of a myriad of the social problems which this country’s administrations and peoples is a major unresolved problem of our human society. The resort to street vending in the manner adopted, arrived over the generations from the failures of our education and skills training institutions to adequately prepare young people to succeed outside of finding a job in the public or private sectors.
Vending and vagrancy therefore become fall back options; which in the right environment can be productive if properly organised and managed. In the instances in which vendors are selling locally produced goods, that is surely one positive aspect of the selling on street corners.
It must be stated though that vending is not a problem peculiar to Trinidad and Tobago. It features in Caribbean countries and on the streets of the major capitals of Western civilisation. The critical difference here is that local and central governments have not been able to devise solutions to permanently situate street vending in an organised, hygienic and controlled environment and manner.
In the capital city there have been attempts going back to the Drag Bros and those who were settled in prime locations in the Frederick to Queen and Henry streets, Charlotte Street and large chunks of Independence Streets.
The reality, one which has not been properly considered, is that vending and vagrancy are live problems which are evolving and becoming more complex with every generation of governmental failure. Creative, organised management, not afraid to set down rules and enforce them at the earliest and slightest indication of violation of the rules are needed.
Mayors, chairmen and their councils of regional corporations cannot pander to those in the central government who see organised and justified reorganisation of governance in electoral terms.
The promise by the present central government to create a whole new system of local government must have vending and vagrancy as major problems to be solved in cities and major towns. Those are issues which must replace blind party loyalty.