Minister of Urban Development, Energy, Airports, Seaports, Grenadines Affairs and Local Government Julian Francis in a recent radio interview provided an update on the recently renovated market buildings.
The COVID-19 pandemic is mostly to blame for the delayed opening of the buildings that will house close to 300 vendors according to Minister Francis.
He says that moving vendors from the outdoors to enclosed spaces would not have been in compliance with the nation’s COVID-19 protocols.
“COVID is the main reason why those have not yet been occupied, because of the protocols and the idea of taking the vendors out of an open air area, putting them, in the peak of COVID, into a closed area—because between those three buildings we have close to 300 stalls.
So in decision with health authorities and our own view on it, we thought it best to leave that until we are out of the COVID woods, and then we would arrange to have the vendors move into that,” he said.
Minister Francis says that as the pandemic winds down, a list is being compiled in order to determine which vendors will be moved into the new market buildings.
“Town board is also fine tuning a list of vendors—who we will give priority to going into those accommodations. That’s basically why it’s not done. In fact, now that we are down to one or two cases and it looks like we over the worst, it is getting attention now and town board is that information that we are asking for,” he said.
