Friday wants Kingstown Town Board to treat vendors with respect

Opposition Leader, Dr Godwin Friday is calling on officials at the Kingstown Town Board to hold consultations with vendors in the Vegetable Market.

Friday was responding to complaints from vendors over the way their belongings were handled during the cleaning of the market last Sunday.

Some vendors also claim they had no prior knowledge of the cleaning on Sunday.

Speaking on the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) New Times programme on Monday, October 24 Friday called on officials of the Town Board to “sit down and talk to the people.”

“Include them in the decision making. Include them in the discussion going forward, and treat them with respect. Don’t treat them as if they are part of the problem.”

The NDP leader visited the market on Monday and spent time listening to the complaints of the vendors.

“One woman tells me that she bought all these things that she selling, shoes and clothing and bags.”

He said the woman reported to him that she had left her goods neatly packed away in her stall and also in a barrel.

“This morning she comes and she can’t find them,” Dr Friday recounted.

“This is unacceptable, she had to wait for other people to tell her that everything locked up.

“This is not good enough, its simply not good enough,” Dr Friday declared.

The Opposition leader said the vendors have a right to be angry about what happened over the weekend.

“You can’t be treated like that.”

On Monday, vendors complained that items were removed from their stalls and placed in the market’s garbage room.

Friday suggested that putting the vendors’ items in the garbage room means that “it is there to be disposed of.”

The Northern Grenadines representative is also wondering what the vendors are going to do with the things they had bought “with their hard earned money.”

“That is not the way you do things, you don’t treat people like that,”he said.

“Don’t treat them as if they are part of the problem.”

Friday added that the vendors are angry about allegedly being treated with disrespect by the Kingstown Town Board.

“People matter, and you have to treat people with respect because after all, who are you doing it for? It is for them.”

Friday maintained that the vendors are in the market as a means of earning a livelihood, to send their children to school and to be able to buy groceries.