Vending stalls outside schools across the municipality of Portmore, St Catherine, were destroyed yesterday, in what the council said was a drive to rid the schools of illegal activities.

The action, which came a day after the vendors were served notice, was done in response to complaints from principals that they were selling drugs to students and hiding weapons in return for sales.

A source from the council, who was with the crew at the school, and who declined to give a name because the individual was not authorised to speak, said the vendors were operating illegally.

"The operation is to clean up school vending. There are persons who are selling things that should not be sold at the school gate," the council official said. "The report that we have from the community safety unit at the St Catherine South police division is that persons are selling marijuana and are hiding guns for the kids in school so, some of the violence we see in schools, vendors are a part of the whole thing and we are doing something about it."

Superintendent Marlon Nesbeth, head of the St Catherine South police division, confirmed that some vendors were involved in illegal activities, as argued by the council.

Needs structure

"Any vending structure should be managed and structured in an orderly way," he said.

Angry vendors who felt they were unfairly targeted then marched to the offices of the Portmore Municipal Council yesterday in protest against action to remove them.

The mostly women vendors who sold at the Ascot Primary School were upset after workmen and officials from the council took hammers to their stalls in a demolition project.

In addition to Ascot Primary and Ascot High schools, Greater Portmore Primary School, Cumberland High School, Bridgeport Primary School, Independence City Primary and Junior High and Braeton Primary and Junior High were involved in yesterday's operation.

Jean Clarke, a vendor, said she felt the good vendors were being targeted and that she thought the officials, who gave them a day's notice, could have been more lenient by observing those who are selling the contraband.

"I am an old lady. I am only trying to make two ends meet. Me have phone bill to pay," she said. "I have no problem with my principal and teachers and I have none with the children ... I go by the rules. I don't have anyone to pay my bills for me. Well, I am not going home to sit down to do no work, nobody don't want me to work for them, I am a pensioner."

Jean Fearon, principal of Ascot Primary, said she felt sorry for some of the vendors who were good.

Some adhere

"As far as I am concerned, there were some vendors who were here who, since the opening of the school, have been adhering to certain rules that we have given to them," she said. "I have said to them that, in order for you to remain here, you can sell certain things like foodstuff and things that children need, like pencils and pens and so on, but the toys and the other things that are not necessary, do not bring them."

Though this was written into a contract in 2007, since then other sellers have not been as compliant.

"There are others who would block the school gate, selling all sorts of things to the children," she lamented. "So many evenings I have had to come down here and get rid of the people."