BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A food vendor, who has been displaced three times prior, is again being asked to refrain from vending at her current location and find an alternative spot.
At around three each morning, Ivy Adams awakes and begins her usual duties with her family in thought. Self employed, the wedded mother of seven earns a living providing breakfast and lunch for the customers who patronise her stall at the West Basseterre Bypass Road – to the rear of Project Strong.
On a daily basis, she arrives there at approximately 7:30 a.m. and leaves at about 3:00 p.m., thence to her home to prepare the next day’s menus.
Adams now wonders how she would be able to support her family, having been issued two letters by the Development Control and Planning Board - one dated April 8, 2010 and the other April 19, 2010 – asking her to “stop all…vending activities along the road”.
“The Development Control and Planning Board (DCPB) is hereby informing you that the vending activity which you are presently engaged along the West Basseterre By-pass Road is not permitted. This activity poses a serious safety issue to the motoring public using the road.
“The DCPB is therefore instructing you to immediately stop all your vending activities along the road. Please be informed that the Traffic Department of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force will be contacted for assistance in ensuring compliance in this matter,” the first letter states.”
The second one explains that “this activity poses a serious safety issue to the motoring public using the road. This road allows vehicle to drive at a speed of 45 miles per hour with heavy equipment, there is need for as little interference as possible in the normal flow of traffic. Again we emphasise the need for maintaining safety standards and we seek your cooperation with this matter.”
The DCPB, through the latter correspondence, repeated the call for Adams to “stop all your vending activities along the road” and to “seek an alternative site that is less dangerous”.
Adams, according to the last of the two letters, was given a four-day grace period to relocate and has yet to do so.
SKNVibes visited the area earlier today (Apr.22) and spoke with the disconcerted vender who explained that she has been asked to move (not by the DCPB) on a number of occasions, requests to which she complied. She said what bothers her about being asked to move is, since she has moved others have occupied those spaces for months on end.
She explained that she was moved from Fort Street - in front of Dominos - where another person currently vends. She was also moved from in front of the old Treasury Building where others now vend.
Adams said that with her tent erected some 21 feet from the road, she doesn’t see how she interferes with or impedes the flow of traffic. The circumstances, she explained, leave her to conclude that she is a victim of unfair treatment.
“I am not troubling anybody. The people don’t park up here for 10 or 15 minutes; they just jump out, buy and they go. So I don’t see is which way I am hampering the traffic. I feel that this is a personal attack. I feel like if I have to move from here, all the vendors from around town have to move…I am not going to move unless they find somewhere to put me!”
SKNVibes contacted Randolph Edmead, Secretary for the DCPB and signatory to the letters, who said, “That is something that is under discussion at the board level and I do not wish to comment on that at this time.”
Adams has until 9:30 tomorrow morning to relocate or she may be forcibly removed.
