Greene ESTIMATES OF the damage to the razed Victoria Jubilee Market, West Queen Street and West Parade, downtown Kingston, has been put at $20 million, excluding the costs to individual vendors, the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation said.
Errol Greene, the Town Clerk, said yesterday that the KSAC would be unable to offer compensation to the affected vendors, but had liaised with Government ministries to present them with micro-financing options that would help them get back on their feet.
Hundreds of vendors had their goods destroyed after a massive fire, attributed to an electrical short circuit, razed the 116-year-old market Sunday night. The vendors estimated that they had lost millions of dollars in goods and equipment. The market was insured, but its contents were not.
Mr. Greene said that all parties (at a meeting attended by the Local Government Minister, himself, KSAC councillors and vendor representatives yesterday) agreed that the fire was not an invitation to the vendors to resume selling on the streets, as the KSAC was offering several alternatives to the affected.
These include meat shop, agricultural produce and cookshop spaces in the nearby Queen's Market; dry goods spaces in the Pearnel Charles Arcade and Redemption Ground Market and numerous spaces at the Oxford Mall Arcade.
Dunstan Whittingham, general secretary of the Jamaica Vendors' Higglers' and Market Association, said the minister also accepted proposals made by the association for a market restoration plan that would see, among other things, a speedy clean-up of the area and installation of lights and sanitary facilities so that some vending could resume on the site.
He said that a newly-formed Ministry of Local Govern-ment/KSAC/Vendor Association committee to plan the way forward would meet next Thursday.
The Town Clerk said that consideration was already being given to rebuilding the site, and it would fall under improvements being conducted in the entire downtown business district.
The rebuilding will form part of improvements in the Downtown Kingston Business Improvement District under the Downtown Kingston Re-development Plan put forward last year by the Prime Minister. The plan will see improvements to the business, entertainment and cultural aspects of the area.
