Restrictions on Charlotte St vendors remain

Port of Spain mayor Joel Martinez says he is standing by his decision to restrict the number of days Charlotte Street vendors will be allowed to ply their trade during the Christmas season.

The vendors are being allowed to sell from Wednesday to Sunday only, but are asking to be allowed to sell every day until December 31, which they have done for the past 11 years.

“A letter was written by the vendors and it came to council,” Martinez told Newsday yesterday. “We deliberated on it and we looked at a number of issues which was, first, we had an agreement with the vendors and the Downtown Owners and Merchants Association to regulate and bring order to the vending.

”Vending has been chaos ever since I arrived as mayor and I have been trying to bring order and some kind of sanity. The same way the vendors complain how they have hard times, it’s also hard times for the business community who run their business and pay their rent on Charlotte Street too.”

The mayor said the two parties compromised and the vendors were allowed the allotted days, but not the extra days they were asking for.

“The objective is to keep it in its current form, where it is more manageable, because you now have to manage the non-vending on the other days,” he said.

Martinez said the vendors do pay a rent for the spaces they occupied and registered to create the programme, but stressed that the corporation would not allow the vendors to “vend at their whim and fancy on the streets.”

But president of the Charlotte Street Heritage Root Vendors Association Junior Lewis said the vendors were requesting the extra days to make up income that they had lost during the previous months.