The Vreed-en-Hoop assault on 30 women.
October 5,2017
On Wednesday evening around 9.50 pm, I was with my wife in the kitchen of my home when my cell phone rang. AFC Parliamentarian, Michael Carrington was at the other end. His voice was loud and angry. He said, “Freddie, they are breaking down the stalls of Vreed-en-Hoop vendors right now.”
I responded; “you mean tonight, right now?” Carrington shouted back, ‘Right now. I am with the vendors.” My question was; “Is it Region Three officials?”
Carrington described the scene for me. Ministry of Public Infrastructure (what a stupid name. If Patterson has any sense he would gazette the change immediately back to “Public Works”) trucks were there and the “bruk up men” are from that Ministry. Every stall of 30 women vendors was completely wrecked.
My mind went back to 2012 and the big fight we had with Region Three authorities who forcefully demolished many stalls at Parika, burning their goods and throwing the stuff on the Ruby foreshore.
It was a graphic display of the kind of sadism we saw under apartheid. There are some idiots writing frequent letters in the newspapers eulogizing the performance of the PPP in government. This apartheid-like bestiality against poor vendors took place during the reign of the PPP. Both the chairman for Region Three and the REO should be placed before the courts for abuse of power but we don’t have such a law on the books.
I will always remember that sight at the Ruby foreshore. Tins of corned beef, sardines, tuna, tomato paste, milk and bottles of oil were burnt. That chairman of Region Three in 2012 in the same chairman today. He belongs to the PPP.
That party leader holds weekly press conferences to inform the Guyanese people of democratic erosion. Some of us took the Region Three authorities to court. Each time, I appeared with the vendors, Region Three attorney, Sase Gunraj, would inform the judge I have no right to be present because I did not have locus standi.
Justice William Ramlal took no notice of Gunraj’s objection but when the case was transferred to another judge, Gunraj requested my removal again and she agreed. Last month, after a long battle, the vendors were allowed to stay. Now after the defeat of the PPP in 2015, vendors’ eviction is still taking place.
The title of this article should have been, “From Bruk-up Benn to Bruk-up Patto.” Patto is the call name for Patterson, the Minister of Public Infrastructure. Once I love my dog, I will always remember Minister Patterson’s decision that almost killed my dog.
I was taking her home after a walk on the Turkeyen seawall when hell overtook the Atlantic highway. Minister Patterson had given orders to close the highway to traffic between Ogle and Turkeyen so Massy company could put up an arch across the road at Cummings Lodge. Psychotic traffic confusion ensued because there was literally nowhere for traffic to go because the Railway Embankment was closed at Liliendaal for bridge repair.
I had my dog in that car for three hours and she almost died (for a description of that terrible incident, see my column of May 13, “This government has gone out of control,” and May 14, “An arch, an ombudsman and clowns in a banana republic.”
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure has wrecked the stalls of 30 women vendors at Vreed-en-Hoop and the ministry’s trucks carted off the wooden remnants. So here Guyana goes again – the assault on poor people. Poor vendors are being devastated and it is not PPP doing it; not the PPP oppressing single parents who vend for a living.
The government says that the people are in the path of the West Demerara road expansion programme.
Carrington told me Minister Patterson gave them one week to move and Phoenix Park was offered to them. The vendors rejected it because it doesn’t have the kind of traffic that obtains at Vreed-en-Hoop by the police station. Indeed that is an extremely busy junction. Vendors will not even get 20 percent of the patronage they pick up at Vreed-en-Hoop.
When Robeson Benn was Ministry of Works, his roadside crews chased single mothers off the junction of Irving Street and Lamaha Street selling bottled waters. This action is coming again. The PPP had Carol Sooba and Benn. The APNU/AFC has Royston King and Patterson.
Carrington asked me to join the picket exercise that he would participate in the next morning (that would be yesterday, Wednesday) but I had to testify that very morning before the Lands Commission. But I will join if the protest continues. We have to struggle for democratic and economic changes. But I’m afraid the horizon doesn’t look good. Sadly in 2015 we got an exchange not a change.
