‘Abolish licence fees for vending’ – Atherley

Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley has called for the abolition of licence fees for vending as he backed a new National Vending Bill.

As lawmakers pushed the legislation through the House of Assembly, Bishop Atherley said supportive legislation has been long overdue for vendors. But he complained that not enough is being done to help uplift vending, which many still see as a pastime and not a legitimate money-earning enterprise.

The Leader of the People’s Party for Democracy and Development (PdP) called for the abolition of “archaic” licence fees as it was his view that such a cost being placed on vendors simply had no place in modern Barbados.

“The licence fee, this is archaic – you want to empower people, do these necessary things, because government can do without that,” he said. “It is not the value, it is the principle, and we are talking to a government here that has waived millions of dollars in taxes for business interests. You want to tell me you are going to waive millions of dollars for taxes for business interests, but a man down the road, a poor old lady up the road, still has to pay $100, $200 for a licence fee.

“I don’t mind the penalties for breaches, you have to have order [though] I do think those penalties are a bit high, but I absolutely do not agree [on a licence fee].”

He told the House: “Vendors today are similarly confined, they are similarly constrained and earnings are equally as meagre as existed decades ago when I was but a boy at St. Giles School. That we could come this far, and that circumstances in comparative terms remain the same, where the aspirations of those who give themselves to vending are limited by ceilings imposed by a system not designed to serve their interests or to give an outlet to their passions and impulses.”

Vending must not merely be decriminalized on the surface, Bishop Atherley suggested, but must be shown on various levels as a viable economic driver, whether as a main form of employment or a secondary earner.

The Opposition Leader declared: “It must be about the economic movement to bring vending to the mainstream of Barbadian economic activity. If that is not the goal, then our vision is blurred. If that is not the goal, then our vision is not farsighted enough, but it must be about ensuring the movement of vending into the mainstream of Barbadian economic activity. Anything else is tokenism.

“Decriminalization is a moral imperative, an absolute moral must, we cannot criminalize people as we have done in the past, and have long established criminal records stand against them for slight breaches of the regulatory framework. The body of rights set to be established to some extent in this legislation is also very needful, but it most go beyond that, it must be an effort, a vision, that gives expression in an effort to move vending into the mainstream of Barbadian economic activity.” (SB)