NA Council seek to enforce street vending ban during market hours

The Mayor and Town Council of New Amsterdam (M&TC) is vowing that street vending will eventually be prohibited during the municipal market’s opening hours.
“The life of the New Amsterdam Market depends heavily on clearing the road shoulders and ensuring that most or all vendors are in the market from 7:00 – 4:30 so as to extend the life of the New Amsterdam Market,” Chairman of the Market Committee Quacy Isaacs said during a recent press conference.
In January, the M&TC vendors operating along the road shoulders in New Amsterdam will be removed before January 10, 2024, stating that roadside vendors were given up to January 2 to remove their structures.
The M&TC intensified its campaign to remove persons illegally vending along the road shoulders of the main roads within the township carrying out its operations in the evening.
Foreman of the Engineering Department, Charles Johnson, said the campaign, which started in January, will run until March, and will first target Strand before moving to Main Street, and then to Republic Road. He noted that the campaign would also be rolled out in Stanleytown and other parts of the town.
However, within a few weeks of its commencement, the campaign came to an end by fulfilling its mandate.
The vendors who were removed and their structures destroyed have returned.
This is not the first time that the New Amsterdam municipality has planned to make such a move; it has almost become an annual affair, and within weeks, the situation returns to what it has always been. Johnson has promised that this time it will be different.
The Engineering Department Foreman had said that over the years, enforcement was an issue. He told the media that they have put together a team that will deal with the enforcement of the policies of the M&TC.
Addressing the issue of illegal street vending recently, Mayor Wainwright McIntosh agreed that for decades the Municipality has been trying to tackle the issue.
“Since Mayor Errol Alphonso, there have been efforts not to sideline the vendors trying to ply their trade but to work with these vendors,” he told the media during a recent press engagement.
“It is quite unfortunate that in this fifth council, you have councillors attempting to abuse the staff of the municipality. As Mayor I am torn between my councillors and the staff of the Mayor and Town Council of New Amsterdam,” the Mayor added.
At that press conference, the Mayor was asked whether his words have weight since he had told the media several months ago that people would only be allowed to vend on the streets within the town after the municipal market was closed. However, there is no evidence of that.
“Yes, the Mayor’s words do have a lot of weight. The Mayor’s words when it comes to the affairs of Local Government it is in keeping with the laws of Guyana. Should I act outside of that, my words of actions could be deemed powerless.”
The Mayor said, while the issue of street vending remains to be solved, he was not responsible for ensuring that the vendors are removed.
“It is the Town Clerk’s duty and responsibility to ensure the biddings of the council is carried out. So my first stop is not at the staff, my first stop is with the Town Clerk. From 2018 to now we have seen that our town is in this state because either the Town Clerk is taking political directives as was evident in the PPP Councillors intercepting the ranks of the Constabulary department from carrying out their bidding. Every person on the road shoulder, they were served notices more than five times.”
He noted that there are videos on social media where councillors are calling the ranks thieves.
“The staff are humans and they will be demotivated. Hence, therein lies the problem, therein lies the difficulty.”
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Market Committee Quacy Isaacs weighing in on the issue said the council has not gone back on its words nor has its position changed as it relates to the roadside vendors.
“However, we have some pushbacks. We as councillors sit around the horseshoe and make decisions. The Town Clerk is expected to have these duties carried out by the staff. So, after we leave the chambers and the decisions are made, the actual work has to be done by the staff and the Town Clerk and that is where we have some problems. Sometimes we had a shortage of ranks, but we also had people being empowered by sitting councillors and encouraged not to come off the streets and that the council can’t move but at no point in time has our position been changed, we are still working on getting everybody off of the road shoulders because the life of the New Amsterdam Market depends heavily on clearing of the road shoulders and ensuring that most or all vendors are in the market from 7:00 – 4:30 so as to extend the life of the New Amsterdam Market.”
He said while the removal of all vendors from the shoulders of the streets will eventually be realised adding that there are castrates affecting the municipality as it relates to achieving that goal.
“The council is trying very hard not to use the ‘big stick’ method on vendors, we would have served them letters and had the Town Clerk speak to them on more than one occasion so eventually if that doesn’t work, we will have to go down that road and use the ‘big stick’ method to get them off of the road,” Isaacs lamented. (G4)