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Vendors Gripped With Fear..

SOME VENDORS at Jamaica’s largest food mar­ket, Coronation, are express­ing seri­ous con­cerns about their safe­ty, charg­ing that crim­i­nals have been rob­bing and attack­ing sell­ers who dare to defy them.

One ven­dor who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty told The Gleaner that the sit­u­a­tion has become increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous, with crim­i­nals rob­bing peo­ple in broad daylight.

“I am scared. I don’t know what is going to hap­pen. We just have to pray and trust in God,” the ven­dor lamented.

According to the con­cerned sell­er, the recent shoot­ing in the down­town Kingston mar­ket has fur­ther height­ened fears among ven­dors and shoppers.

The ven­dor said that many cus­tomers have indi­cat­ed that they are con­cerned about the ten­sion in west Kingston and reports of per­sons being robbed in the market.

In addi­tion, the ven­dor said there appears to be a con­sid­er­able decline in the num­ber of peo­ple who usu­al­ly turn up at the mar­ket on Thursdays and Saturdays to pur­chase ground provisions.

Another ven­dor at the mar­ket report­ed being robbed of about $70,000 at the Coronation Market.

Challenging To Police

Town Clerk Robert Hill said the mar­ket is sit­u­at­ed in a chal­leng­ing loca­tion in west Kingston where com­pet­ing gangs operate.

“Whereas we have secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed with­in the mar­ket, we still are not ful­ly capa­ble of man­ag­ing the types of things that go on in there in terms of rob­bery, because it is a porous area,” he said.

“Historically, where the mar­ket is locat­ed it is a dif­fi­cult place — it is just dif­fi­cult to man­age. We can­not con­trol the social con­struct around the mar­ket because those vari­ables are out­side the remit of the KSAC (Kingston and St Andrew Corporation), but we are doing all we can, along with the police, to secure the area,” the town clerk asserted.

He said the KSAC and the city engi­neer have been work­ing to cre­ate more order­ly access to the market.

Several calls were made to the Darling Street police for com­ment but the offi­cer in charge was in a meet­ing. Subsequent calls to the offi­cer proved futile, as his phone rang with­out an answer.