Zones coming for vendors

Government is moving to establish several selling zones as part of efforts to provide additional opportunities for vendors.

This was revealed by Minister of Small Business, Energy and Entrepreneurship, Kerrie Symmonds today. He said the time had come for vending to be seen as a viable means of employment.

Leading off debate on Day one of the 2021/2022 Estimates where his ministry is seeking $34,036,836, Symmonds maintained that vendors were oftentimes criminalized while trying to earn an honest living.

He explained that was one of the reasons behind a new Vending Bill, which would soon be going to Cabinet.

“We have to legitimize this business of vending. We have to decriminalize the business of vending. Very often and I think we’ve all read it in the papers, we’ve all heard the lamentations, we’ve heard the stories, very often people seeking to have an honest living are treated by the law under the current legal constructs in Barbados as being nothing less than criminal simply because of the fact that they have erected on a site without permission or they have placed their goods in a way of obstructing somebody else or for some other reason.

“Very often they are treated exceptionally badly in the courts of Barbados. I am an attorney-at-law and I can say that I have seen it first-hand and I want to say that part of that which we are bringing to this Parliament in very short order is a now completed Vending Bill and a policy framework which will see specific zones being created for vendors in Barbados and to empower them,” Symmonds told the Standing Finance Committee.

While the minister said Cabinet would make the final determination on where the new zones would be located, he revealed that Warrens and Top Rock had been identified as possible areas.

He said he had already visited the Warrens area along with Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources Charles Griffith.

Symmonds added that the proposed zones would have running water, electricity and bathroom facilities.

“The five facilities to be constructed are part of the creation along the streets of Barbados of zones for vendors to be able to operate. It is the judgment of the Ministry and the judgment of the Cabinet that we have to give purpose and meaning to this ideal of making vending a legitimized form of business. It therefore means we cannot continue to have vendors operating almost on a willy nilly basis alongside the streets.

“We have to transform the reality of how our vending community exists and to bring them into the 21st century with all of the amenities of the 21st century. Therefore we have begun the process of identifying places along the highway where we will, given the limitations of the public purse at this time, be in a situation to start to create zones…This has to be done across a number of areas in Barbados,” Symmonds pointed out. (RB)