Vendors transform Wharf into eyesore

Sat, Dec 17th 2011, 08:05 AM

Straw vendors moved into the new Nassau Market on Thursday, but the piles of garbage some of them left behind at Prince George Wharf remained as cruise ships pulled into Nassau Harbour yesterday.
The entire sidewalk of the Wharf was filled with broken tents, chairs, buckets, crates and other trash vendors neglected to dispose of.
"It's a horrible impression.  I've never seen this.  It's ugly," said a female tourist, who said she has visited The Bahamas several times before.
"If this was my first impression,  I probably wouldn't come back."
Florida native, Steve Hanrahan, shared similar thoughts.
"I've been here before and it was nicer then when all the vendors weren't set up on the sidewalks like that.  But to walk down there now like this, isn't a very good impression," Hanrahan said.
"[It kind of] makes you look dirty [when] the rest of Nassau is beautiful."
Some Bahamians also expressed disgust at what they saw at the Wharf.
"It's an eyesore," said Shane Roberts.  "It's a disgrace to the Bahamian people that the tourists would come here on the ships and the first thing they would see [is what] looks like another hurricane has hit here.
"I think personally that they shouldn't have been allowed to move in [the new market] until they cleaned up the garbage that they accumulated over the two months that they were here."
Ian Lightbourne, from Big Red Trucking and Construction, who was contracted by the Ministry of Works to clean up the mess, said it's unfortunate that crusie ships docked before cleanup efforts were completed.
"It is a lot of work,"  Lightbourne said.  "This is a traffic area and that happens to be the only problem where you can't access the side roads...because they are all one way."
Lightbourne said he had 23 people cleaning up the area and hoped to be finished by 5 p.m.
"I'm calling up all the trucks from different companies...to come and give me a hand because they don't want you to linger with it because it's an eyesore," he said.  However, Roberts said work should have started earlier.
"They should have started this from daybreak or first thing, 4 a.m. this morning, so when the crusie ships pulled in here [the tourists] didn't get to see the deplorable state of our country," he said.
Hundreds of vendors moved into the new market, more than 10 years after the old market was destroyed by fire. For many years vendors had been working under a tent on Bay Street. But that tent was badly damaged by Hurricane Irene in August. In recent weeks, vendors operated from Prince George Wharf.  The market was opened to the public yesterday.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian

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