WESTERN BUREAU:

MAYOR OF Lucea and chairman of the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC) Sheridan Samuels has listed street vending in the Hanover capital, Lucea, as an issue which will be getting immediate priority attention from that corporation.

“If we do not have law and order within the capital town, we will not have it within the parish,” Samuels opined while extending the welcome at the first official sitting of the HMC since the recent local government elections, at which seven People’s National Party councillors were elected.

Pointing out that street vending has gotten out of hand in Lucea, Samuels warned that the political arm of the HMC is not going to sit idly by and allow that illegal situation to continue.

“We have a market that we have renovated to hold these persons (vendors) inside there, and things cannot remain how it is now,” he said

The market he was referring to is the Cleveland Stanhope Mrket in Lucea, where a multi-million dollar renovation project took place in 2023, under the previous HMC administration.

The mayor described the street vending situation in Lucea as “disgraceful”, adding that pedestrians have to be walking in the middle of the streets at some points, because of the street vendors and their stalls.

“For this term, I am going to ask the administrative arm of the HMC, which has the responsibility, to ensure that we manage our town in such a way that the pedestrians who are using the town space itself, especially on the Willie Delisser Boulevard, have space to walk, as it is difficult for them to walk there now,” he stated.

Samuels insisted that immediate action is needed to rid the streets of the vendors, noting that the situation is even more dangerous for pedestrians, since the Willie Delisser Boulevard has been turned in a two-way traffic flow roadway.

“We definitely have to get them (the vendors) off the space there,” he said, adding that a number of vendors have been setting up stalls in front of the Lucea Transport Centre, a situation that cannot be allowed to continue, as they, too, must be removed and sent to occupy available space in the market.

He made a specific call on the chief executive officer of the HMC, David Gardner, for some type of action to be taken about the mentioned situation, while emphasising to him that the political directorate of that corporation is looking to him for immediate action.

“We do not want, at the end of the year, we are made to understand that we as the local political representatives inside here are not doing anything at all,” he said, adding that Lucea now has a new councillor among the seven newly elected councillors, who must be given the necessary assistance to clean up the town.