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Kitty Market will not be privatized- Sooba
… still no date on rehabilitation works
Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba has made it clear that the decrepit Kitty Market will not be privatized, nor will it be torn down. The Town Clerk told media representatives that the City Engineer’s department had an estimate done to renovate the aged colonial edifice, but will be redoing it. She expressed the hope that the document is submitted soon.
Unable to state when the renovation works will commence, Sooba added that the market is a heritage structure and can’t be destroyed. She noted that while the City Mayor Hamilton Green has called on private persons to aid in the market’s rehabilitation, none have come to the fore.
The current state of the Kitty Market.
However, those concerned with the market are unconvinced that the government or the City Council intends to rehabilitate the English built bazaar.
Two main concerns remain with the stakeholders; the building’s non-privatisation and its instant rehabilitation. Earlier in the year, Acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba said that plans were being made to relocate vendors to the Kitty Public Road before a private group demolishes the heritage building.
She said that the private group submitted a proposal to the Local Government Ministry, and expressed an interest in tearing down the wooden structure since it was a threat to “life and limb and that the Guyana Fire Service had already declared it a fire hazard.
Kitty residents, especially the market vendors have blamed the Government and the City Council for ignoring constant pleas to have the market renovated. They aired their belief that a conspiracy was at work to dispose the market to private entrepreneurs.
“We heard for months of some Chinese interest and that they made proposals- to government I suppose- to take over the market,” Kitty Market Action Committee member and stallholder, Tacuma Ogunseye said.
In an interview with this newspaper, he said that the news is being treated as a rumour since no actual proposals were made, “but we have come to the conclusion that the market is being kept for private friends. But we hold the Minister responsible for the market’s rehabilitation since he had stated a willingness to address the matter.”
Ogunseye said that a letter from the Local Government Ministry to address the Kitty Market issue was the first official response to the matter. “The response was the first official acknowledgment of receipt of letter and we await a plan from Council for rehabilitation.”
Another committee member Bibi Ferguson charged that Mayor Hamilton Green had told them in an earlier meeting that the Chinese wanted to buy the market, but they refused, “because we are Guyanese and we can’t go anywhere else and make a living. We got to stay here and make our living. This belongs to us,” she said.
Ferguson said, “We blame the Mayor and City Council wholly and solely for the state of the market.” She questioned what happened to the money that was being collected over the years and questioned further why the market was left to deteriorate.
The Action Committee is however adamant that they are against the privatization or wholesale sell out of the market. “Our contention is that the market is a community institution, the space was dominated by residents of Kitty for the sole purpose of the market and we believe no one has the right to deprive the community of the market.”
“We believe that the market can be rehabilitated and the Council and Central Government have the moral obligation to rehabilitate it.” The committee members claim that they are aware of monies allocated for the market’s rehabilitation but which was never used for that purpose.
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