Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie has accused municipal corporations controlled by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) of leasing out the facilities to persons affiliated to the PNP, including a councillor, to the detriment of vendors.

Specifically, McKenzie said the St Thomas Municipal Corporation has leased the Yallahs market to an individual who operates a welding plant from inside the facility with the vendors being locked out.

McKenzie made the charge during Saturday night’s debate involving representatives of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the PNP at the Creative Production and Training Centre at Arnold Road, Kingston.

Responding to a question about ‘Why has the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) allowed illegal vending to overrun residential areas?’, McKenzie was apparently ticked off by the response of the PNP’s Andrew Swaby and Scean Barnswell. According to Swaby, addressing vending in residential areas is a “matter of political will”.

He accused Kingston’s Mayor, Delroy Williams, who also represented the JLP during the debate of “wanting to be a good guy who’s afraid of taking tough decisions”.

Continuing, Swaby said “It’s all about education Mayor, it’s all about having discussions with the vendors. They play a vital role but you cannot allow vendors to just [be] all over the city”.

Pointing out that there are vending zones, Swaby said “What you’ve done Mayor is you have put a blind eye to some of these issues that is running down our communities”.

Barnswell said the municipal corporations need to work more closely with businesses to improve spaces in the town centres to accommodate these vendors. He said this approach was utilised successfully in May Pen, Clarendon when the PNP was in charge of the corporation.

An unimpressed McKenzie, while acknowledging that there was a problem with streetside vending asked ‘”How can the PNP speak about vending when markets that were built to accommodate vendors have been leased to a PNP councillor in Yallahs for over 21 years but yet the vendors are allowed to sit at the gate and can’t enter into the market?”

“You go to Whitehouse in Westmoreland where the market…was leased to a gentlemen; he’s paying $7,000 a year to the municipal corporation and is renting one shop for $10,000 a month. Little London in Westmoreland, the vendors are on the street while the market is being used to build headstones to put on tombs. They can’t speak about vending because they do not have that moral authority to speak about vending because they‘ve not improved our market districts across this country in all the years that they’re there,” McKenzie added.

For his part, Williams said it was not true that vending was allowed freely in residential areas in the corporate area.

“Once we’re notified we take enforcement action. Sometimes it takes time to rid the residential area of the vending practice because it requires a certain level of consistency so you do it, the vendors go back after two weeks and you have to continue again so it takes some time. He also dismissed as untrue, the claim that he was afraid to address the issue.

Saturday night’s was the second of two debates organised by the Jamaica Debates Commission ahead of the Local Government Election that will be held on February 26.