THE STREETS of Downtown Kingston, jammed with vendors, are not only undermining business for scores of merchants, but also, they pose a fire and health hazard.
A tour of vendor-jammed Princess and Beckford streets, and talks with the Jamaica Fire Brigade, the Public Health Department and some merchants yesterday, revealed that several vendors are breaking not only no-vending laws but are putting themselves and shoppers at risk by ignoring basic hygiene and fire prevention rules.
Rap, reggae and dancehall music blasted out of numerous sound systems, powered, like many stalls, by illegal connections to electricity lines, linked to nearby wholesale shops and stores.
Overhead was line after line of clothes and tarpaulin hanging atop telephone and electricity wires, cutting off any view of the sky on Beckford Street.
Pedestrians could barely see in front of them much more to the end of the street. Any movement on both streets was made difficult by congested sidewalks, piled with stalls. The streets were packed with goods and crammed with vendors vying for the attention of the few shoppers; the roadways were overrun by handcarts. The chaos spilled over into lanes connecting both streets, where some vendors even sold ganja openly. No police was seen in the area.
A truck belonging to a nearby Bashco store, was forced to unload in the middle of the street, as delivery and store entrances were blocked off. A request that a vendor move was met with the quick flash of a knife, one delivery truck driver told The Gleaner.
District Officer Floyd McLean, of the Jamaica Fire Brigade's Fire Prevention Unit, warned that if there is a fire, several people would be killed in a stampede and many businesses would be gutted because fire trucks would have no easy entry to the affected area. He said that vendors should not do activities which may lead to fire outbreaks, including stealing electricity and selling starlights, fire crackers, matches and other flammable materials, especially to youngsters.
The Public Health Department also had its own warning to shoppers, urging them not to buy cooked food and other easily-infected items from vendors in the area.
"They shouldn't be buying from them because these itinerant vendors have no food-handler's licence and no establishment licence. We have no way of knowing how they prepare the food," said Dr. Herb Elliott, Medical Officer of Health for Kingston.
"All we can do is warn the public not eat from them. When you work out what it is, it's more expensive than going into a decent place, because it might cost a few cents less, but what you may have to pay in doctor bills from diarrhoeal disease, it will cost you a lot more," he added.
Poor hygiene was evident during the tour. At various sections and near to the meat market on Princess Street, there were flies making merry and laying eggs on discarded pieces of meat, which lay atop mounds of uncollected garbage. Sections of the market were also littered with discarded fish scales and the floor was wet with water in which the fish was cleaned.
It drained into the gutter and was ignored by vendors who scaled away, or erected stalls on either side of the gutters over the fly-infested water.
The scent of stale urine permeated the air behind the Azan's store on the corners of Beckford and Princess streets, making a mockery of signs painted in red which screamed, 'No pissing allowed here!' and 'No urinal is here'.
As rivulets of urine ran along a gutter in an alley bordering Beckford Street, an elderly gentleman stood nearby cursing the "nastiness".
"Everyday me and someone catch up bout it. Ah right here mi siddung and mi can't siddung deh because sometimes ah right yah so dem mess up and come throw it. Sometimes mi sick, mi sick. It out fi kill mi," he said.
He was joined by store managers who said that they had cleaned the area just the day before and three times before in this week alone. As they spoke, a young man drew close to a wall, pulled his pants zipper and proceeded to urinate.
One business manager, added, with disgust, that it was mostly female vendors who stooped and either urinated or defecated there.
"You know you have women come around here and change dem pad and throw it in there," he said, adding that people were also in the habit of passing faeces into plastic bags and tossing them into the alley behind Azan's or onto the rooftops of nearby businesses.
Dr. Elliott said he was going to visit the area today, but the on-going situation, which some said was made worse by Government's recent promise to allow vendors to operate as usual over the Christmas season, had made store owners, such as Mark Azan, angry.
It is this type of lawlessness that is crippling business downtown, he said. "I tell you, only 10 per cent is the economic situation. Lawlessness is responsible for the rest," he said.
Mr. Azan added that "politicians do not understand that the road to development is by rule of law, maintaining law and order in a country, educating its people and providing a justice system. We have too many politicians and no governance."
