Last minute back-to-school shoppers flood commercial centres

There was an ambivalent air in central Georgetown on Saturday, as last minute back-to-school shoppers enthusiastically flooded the commercial shopping areas of Robb and Regent Streets, while local street vendors bemoaned loss of business to the presence of foreign investors.

Late Shoppers flood Regent Street on Saturday

In what many believe to a Guyanese tradition, parents and guardians rushed down to the city’s central shopping locations to snap up supplies mere days before schools across the country open their doors to welcome students for the new academic year.
Guyana Times spoke with several late shoppers, who hustled and bustled around Georgetown on the last shopping before school reopens.
Tyrese (only name given) was shopping with his cousins when he spoke to this newspaper. “It’s kinda fun but when you shopping last minute, it’s kind of a rush, so next year I would try to get everything before last minute.”
Queens College student, Andrew Persaud, described his experience as very busy and hectic which was inevitable, having had to wait for his CSEC results before deciding to leave St Roses High to further his studies.
Meanwhile, this publication encountered several parents who identified themselves as “sweepers” in the recent protest, decrying their strained financial situation resulting from non-payment and depressed wages for their services, which was more than inefficient to support their school-aged children when the doors open on September 4.
“I am not comfortable but I am coping with it… that is the most I could do. I wouldn’t steal so I have to cope,” one single parent lamented.
Meanwhile, while some vendors reported an increase in sales during the course of the past week, other sellers complained of relatively low and stagnant sales despite the heavy presence of customers who paraded the commercial shopping district.
“Business is so nice… off of this vending, I got a daughter who write some subjects, she got five twos, three threes and one four,” a single parent vendor proudly declared.
Two particularly feisty sales girls dressed in flashy red and white school outfits made well with effective advertising as customers flocked their stands.
“Because this is the last day for all the school shopping, so we just decided to come up with something to make it more spicy. We have a variety of stuff, right now we are helping out the youths to get cheap things for school, we have bags for as low as $1000, lunch packs for as low as $500… we have a big sale at Ashley’s Fashion… we have a lot to offer,” the enthusiastic girls announced.
However some small-scale vendors made little or no sale at all for the day, claiming business is “not the same as before” prior to the influx of relatively large numbers of Chinese stores in the city.
“Business is not too good and not too bad, it’s coming around. The Brazilians, the Cubans and all of those persons they come and shopping at the Chinese so we who are on the street are not making any money. They (the Guyanese shoppers) going in, they picking up their brother, sister, cousin, auntie and they going and buy at the wholesale place… so we out here, we’re suffering,” one vendor stated.
According to another vendor, “it’s not like before, you know, things drop back a lot but we still trying with it. I’m hoping for business to pick up.”
The vendors, despite having accepted their fate, are nonetheless hoping that business improves overtime as school reopens on Monday.