Downtown Nassau straw vendors want government assistance following damage to the temporary straw market by Hurricane Irene

Vendors want govt assistance following damage to temporary market

Vaughnique Toote
Guardian Staff Reporter
toote@nasguard.com

Downtown straw vendors are pleading with the government to provide them with some sort of assistance in the wake of Hurricane Irene, which wrecked the temporary market they have worked in for more than a decade.

Straw vendors were shocked when they visited their workplace Friday morning and discovered that intense winds had blown the roof off.

A number of stalls were damaged as well.

“When I heard on the news that it was destroyed, I was very upset because this is my bread and butter,” said vendor Anne Green.  “I don’t know what the government is going to do, I don’t know if they’re going to assist us.  It’s very bad because I have four children in school and you have your bills.”

Green estimates she will lose about 100 dollars each day the market is closed.

Elaine Williams questioned how long she and her colleagues would be out of work.

“What I’d like to know is how long we have to stay home and if the government will help us,” she said.  “Because it would not be right staying home for weeks with nothing at all.  I need some money to pay my lil’ bills.”

Scores of vendors tried to access the market to check their stalls and see the extent of the damage firsthand.  However, police officers blocked the entrances for safety purposes.

From the outside of the tent, damaged goods could be seen on the ground.

While the majority of straw vendors cleared their stalls before the storm, others left their products in plastic bags on tables in the market.

Vendor Ellen Russell said she lost most of her goods.

“I was on vacation so I left everything.  I just got back on the island late Wednesday and had to prepare my home,” she said.

“I have to replace what I had in there so I don’t have the stuff to sell even when we have a place to sell it in.”

Yesterday Minister of Public Works Neko Grant said the government has not yet decided what will happen to the temporary market.

Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette and his wife Robin took a look at the damage while on a personal tour of the area on Thursday.

“There is some good and some bad,” Symonette said.

“Hopefully it will speed up the completion of the new market.  Also as September comes it is traditionally a slow season for tourism.  So, hopefully we will be able make some adjustments and get towards the new market.”

Like many of her fellow straw vendors, Sharon Carey said she is anxious to hear from government officials on the way forward.  She added she is grateful to God because their situation could have been much worse.

“As I stand here, I can honestly say I am happy, and to God be the glory for the great and marvelous things he has done,” Carey said with a big smile on her face.

“We don’t have a roof, but we have our booths.  We’ll see what the prime minister does, if we get to stay here or we get to go into the new market.”

Aug 27, 2011

thenassauguardian

Caribbean Blog International

Straw vendors need to face reality

It's time for straw vendors to face reality
tribune242 editorial


OVER THE years the politicians - especially PLP politicians -- have mollycoddled straw vendors to the point where they think they are extra special -- and possibly, in some cases, above the law.

In fact they are special -- over the years there have been many hard working, outstanding citizens among them who have produced fine sons and daughters who have become leaders in this country.

However, when it comes to obeying the law and respecting society's rules, they are no more special than any other Bahamian. No matter what they might think, no matter what special concessions they believe the government might owe them for their loyalty, they are not above the law.

As a matter of fact all any government owes its citizens is a duty to create an atmosphere in which they can live, work, play and develop their God-given talents to support themselves and their families. The rest is up to them.

Many of the poor among us believe that because they are poor, the laws should be bent for them. "Man, gimme a break, I's jus a poor man!" This poor man exists under the radar, manipulating the law to the end of his existence. But there is the poor man, who recognises that despite his poverty, he has worth and ability. He rises above his poverty, works hard, develops his talents, aims for the stars and is happy if he reaches the tree tops. At least he has dragged himself up from poverty, and achieved on the right side of society.

However, Mrs Esther Thompson, president of the Straw Business Persons Association -- and a reverend, no less -- on Wednesday urged her members to get their act together, because the war over the straw market "is on." The war is on with whom?

Mrs Thompson, and about a dozen of her followers, were angry at the new rules announced by Works Minister Niko Grant at Wednesday's roof-wetting ceremony for the new straw market.

The object of the rules is to take the new market to a higher standard of excellence from which Bahamian crafted straw work can be sold. Mrs. Thompson seems to think that the vendors have ownership in this new market and are going to run it as they see fit.

Well, we have some startling news for her. The market is owned by the Bahamian people -- it has been built with taxpayer's money. Straw vendors have no monopoly over it. If they want to pay a small rent and move into a stall, willing to obey all the rules of the market, they will be welcomed. If not, then as free citizens they can find their own outlet from which those who wish can continue to flaunt the law by selling counterfeit merchandise, and risk facing their own day in court. Mr Grant announced that only Bahamian goods will be sold in the market. Counterfeit goods -- for which nine Bahamians were arrested in New York in September -- will be strictly prohibited. Vendor licenses will be restricted to Bahamian citizens, and rental charges will range from $200 to $250 a month; $46 to $58 a week or $6.50 to $8.20 a day -- very modest rents when one considers the high rates paid by other Bay Street businesses.

The new policies and guidelines, said Mr Grant, are expected to assist "in the more effective and efficient management of the new Bay Street straw market."

Mrs Thompson declared the vendors' intention to defy the rules -- she was encouraged by her supporters' lusty cheers. She then made this alarming statement:

"Whatever comes through customs, that is what straw vendors are going to sell," she declared. It would seem that the time spent by nine of her members in the hands of the law in New York has not taught her a lesson. The arrested Bahamian vendors with their counterfeit goods, who could have spent years in a federal prison in the US, got off lightly -- only one of them had to make restitution for her illegal purchases. The others are under various lengths of supervised probation. It is questionable as to whether they will be allowed back in the US. Mrs Thompson's declared position on the matter certainly will not help their cause.

The arrested vendors admitted that they knew that the goods they were purchasing -- Gucci, Prada, Dolce, Gaban, Juicy Couture and others, picked up from New York's flee markets -- were not only counterfeit, but illegal. However, according to their skewered thinking - supported by Mrs Thompson-- once they got them through Nassau Customs and paid duty on them, they were somehow sanitised of their illegality and ready for legal sale in what is meant to be Bay Street's straw market.

Mrs Thompson wants to put the onus on the Customs officer to determine whether vendors' goods are legal. This is most unfair. If the goods are illegal, and the vendors purchased them with the full knowledge of their illegality, then they are the only ones guilty of an illegal act. They cannot compromise an innocent customs officer. We hope no other Bahamian reverend tries to make a fool of the law in this fashion.

Also if these vendors can spend so much money on these New York trips, bringing back garbage bag loads of illegal goods, then surely they can pay the reasonable rents asked by government to help maintain a first class straw market on Bay Street.

November 26, 2010

tribune242 editorial

Bahamas Blog International

The Straw Vendors' Association demands the redesign of the new Straw Market ...

Vendors demand market redesign
By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net


THE Straw Vendors' Association wants the design of the new Straw Market to be changed to accommodate more retailers in spaces designated for craft-making demonstrations, according to a well-placed source.

The request was made recently, however there is no indication so far that the Government will adjust its plans for the new market.

The $11.3 million project calls for several demonstration booths to be placed in the middle of the market which would showcase artisans creating crafts by hand. It is a feature those close to the design feel will add a form of entertainment and will keep customers in the centre longer, thus increasing business.

These demonstration booths will be larger than the standard three by six booth the straw vendors will occupy, and the association would like them to be replaced with areas where vendors can sell their goods, said the source.

"The vendors are an association, like a union, they want to be able to say to our vendors that we are accommodating as many people as possible (in the new market). They don't care about the design, they only want to be able to say to their vendors that they have maximised the number of people that can be there and that's been their position from day one," said the source.

In December, Ministry of Works' officials revealed the new market will only have space to house about 500 vendors.

The new market will span approximately 34,000 square feet at the ground level, and includes a 4,500 square foot mezzanine level. The ground floor will be open, however the air-conditioned upper level will be closed with space for after-school children's activities.

Attempts to reach association President Telator Strachan last night were unsuccessful.

During an earlier interview with The Tribune she said she felt affronted that tourism officials and the Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation are promoting artisans to sell their handmade goods on "prime" spots near docked cruise ships and along Bay Street.

"Another injustice (to vendors) is that BAIC and the Ministry of Tourism have placed these people on Bay Street and on the (Prince George Wharf) dock," she said, questioning why those retailers are allowed to convene on the street when Straw Market vendors are confined to one location.

"I have nothing against those (new) designs but BAIC and the ministry are advertising them as if they are the only authentic straw products in the Bahamas. They are pitting those people against straw vendors. They are giving them advertising and putting them in prime spots."

Ms Strachan suggested that these new crop of craft sellers be moved to Festival Place or an unused warehouse near Prince George Wharf - a site where the Government had previously suggested the Straw Market vendors relocate.

November 12, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

Time for straw vendors to get their house in order

Time for vendors to get their house in order
tribune242 editorial


"SHOWBOATING" on the sidelines is what government is calling the position taken by the PLP in the case of the nine jailed straw vendors in New York. We see it as the PLP playing its usual game -- taking advantage of the ignorance of less fortunate people.

The position is that nine straw vendors went to New York in September on a shopping spree. According to their own admissions they knowingly purchased fake designer goods -- brand named bags and jewellery -- for resale at their market stalls on Bay Street. As they waited at the airport in New York to board their return flight to Nassau, loaded down with shopping bags of illegal goods, they were arrested and charged in a Manhattan court with conspiracy to defraud the US by trafficking in counterfeit merchandise.

Because Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette, who is also Minister of Foreign Affairs, made a public statement to the effect that vendors at home should take note of what had happened to their colleagues and govern themselves accordingly, the PLP are trying to infer that the government had abandoned the straw vendors. They had no intention of helping them, said the PLP, until the PLP got on their case and embarrassed them into action.

This, of course, is not true. The government was not embarrassed by the PLP's senseless haranguing. On learning of the vendors arrest all agents of government moved in to provide whatever help they could. Mr Symonette received a daily report from the Bahamas Consulate in New York, which provided assistance to the vendors and kept their families informed.

Almost immediately the Ministries of Education and Labour and Social Development assisted the families and children left behind in Nassau. The government also engaged legal counsel to represent the vendors.

But apparently that is not enough. The PLP want the government to help them with their bail, find suitable accommodation for them until they go to trial, resolve the bond issue "and see whether -- since this is a government-to-government issue -- to see if we can't through the attorneys seek to get the charges dropped."

Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell and Fort Charlotte MP Alfred Sears, both lawyers, should know that once a matter gets before the courts it ceases to be a government-to-government issue. Nobody can interfere with the judicial process. No one can do it in the Bahamas, nor can anyone do it in New York. It is, therefore, wrong to take advantage of less educated people, and make them believe that somehow governments can negotiate with the courts. Should offenders facing our courts in Nassau and jail time in HM Prison expect the same consideration from their government? These PLP lawyers should know that the symbol of a blindfolded justice sends out the message that all persons are equal before the Law and each gets equal justice -- regardless of who they happen to be. The most the Bahamas government can do is to ensure that the vendors have good legal representation and are judged fairly. The vendors cannot expect more than that - and it is wrong of the PLP to fool them into believing otherwise. The law cannot be bent to accommodate them. As for those still in Nassau, who want to find wiggle room to continue the illicit trade, they should take Mr Symonette's wise advise and get their stalls in order before the police have to come and do it for them.

The PLP should be the last to be crowing when we discover that when the matter of the counterfeit goods should have been settled in 2006, a "senior government official" in the PLP administration instructed a "senior police official" not to raid the vendors' stalls, but let them continue to sell their goods. These instructions came after police raided the warehouse on East Street, allegedly the supplier of the counterfeit goods, and were prepared to move onto the straw market to put a stop to the illegal trade there.

The police's lack of action in stamping out the trade in 2006 led the US government to unfairly conclude that Bahamian police officers were "complicit" in the straw market's counterfeit commerce. From the information we now have the police turned a blind eye to what was going on in the market on instructions in 2006 from a "senior government official."

This is why we find the holier-than-thou position now being taken by the PLP not only farcical, but insincere. If they are so concerned, why don't some of them take up a collection and help pay the bail for the ladies who are now in distress?

They should also go to the straw market and -- despite the famous remarks of one reverend gentlemen that "principles don't put food on the table" -- instruct the ladies that the continued illegal sale of counterfeit goods that once put food on their tables, will now land them in jail.

We recommend to the straw vendors that instead of being lulled into a stupor by PLP words excusing their actions, they should heed the sound advice of Mr Symonette, who said: "As a result of these charges, I highly recommend that Bahamians be guided accordingly."

In other words quickly clean up your act and abide by the law.

October 06, 2010

tribune242 editorial

Bahamas Blog International