Vendor Complains She Can’t Afford Rental Fee

Patricia Madril

The proposed three-hundred-dollar rental fee, according to retailers using CitCo’s booths, will further cripple their already weakened bottom line.  Patricia Madril has been selling food within the zone for the past fifteen years and maintains that not only is the fee exorbitant, but it is also unreasonable.  She says the new regime doesn’t take into consideration a huge decrease in sales in the wake of NCL’s transfer to Harvest Caye.

Patricia Madril, Food Vendor

“Three hundred is too much.  It is too small and if it’s a donation they get we could pay a small rent.  The mayor said that, on the news I heard the mayor say that they don’t want to pay rent.  The mayor was wrong, he was wrong because they never… When I asked Mrs. Elrington how much the rent will be, as she got into the booth she said she doesn’t know yet.  So they just want to come with three hundred [dollars].  I know the government needs money but don’t take it out of we poor people because we are locals.  And pan top, it’s not the tourists that buy food from us, it’s the local vendors.  Sometime they don’t even have five dollars to buy food.  They don’t even have five dollars to buy food but City Council thinks we are making a lot of money because they hear tourists.  They sure ah fi dehn head count but we the locals, tourists don’t buy from us.  Now and again when they want to taste our local food because they get food on the ship.  They say they get it free.  So it’s the locals that come to work that we provide for and I only come and work when it’s a ship day because otherwise out here is too slow for business.  And if they charge me three hundred a month, I have my house bills weh I haftu pay too.  So how I wah pay City Council three hundred a month and things done slow and dis da high season and dis da di worse high season.  Worse high season I’ve ever seen and I deh out ya fifteen years.”