City vendors’ kiosks near completion

After several delays, Fairchild Street food and beverage vendors will be moving into their new working areas over the coming weeks.

Word of this has come from Joy-Ann Haigh, Chief Executive Officer of Haigh Communications, public relations consultant for the project.

She told Barbados TODAY that officials were getting ready to hand over the keys to more than 40 vendors to occupy the food and beverage stalls in the newly-built market village.

“I expect to start the movement over the next few days. It will be a gradual move for them,” said Haigh.

The vendors plying their trade in the Fairchild Street location have been concerned about the long delays associated with their promised move, with some vegetable sellers being up-in-arms about a move to a nearby temporary location.

The relocation of the food and beverage vendors into the new kiosks, which are adjacent to the Fairchild Street Bus Terminal, is phase one of the upgrade project for the area and forms part of the wider Bridgetown Transformation Project.

In this phase, the food and beverage vendors along Fairchild Street along with the vendors who were affected by the demolition of the market at Probyn Street will be the first to move into the new buildings.

Stage two will include the temporary relocation of the fruit and vegetable and variety vendors under nearby tents on an open lot.

Following the construction of more kiosks in the Market Village, those vendors will be relocated there.

“In that make-up, we have people such as barbers and hairdressers and that would be in another phase,” said Haigh, who added that phase three of the move will include the butchers’ block.

“Those butchers were displaced with the demolition so they have been temporarily relocated,” she explained.

In addition to vendors, phase three will include the relocation of taxi drivers to the nearby Probyn Street area in the vicinity of the old Empire Theatre.

Once the Fairchild Street area is cleared of the vendors, approximately 58 structures are to be dismantled and those structures will be transferred to locations of the vendors’ choosing.

Over the past few days, officials have been involved in inspection of the brightly-coloured new buildings in the Market Village, and correcting any minor defects.

The Ministry of Agriculture, the landlords, will hand the vendors their new contracts shortly.

Officials are hoping to host a two-day financial management and solid waste management seminar for the vendors ahead of their move.

The project was expected to be completed in November 2020 at a cost of approximately $3.8 million. The completion date was then shifted to the end of June.

Haigh told Barbados TODAY that in addition to the curfew and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the ashfall from the La Soufriere volcano in April contributed to the delays.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb