Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer
A smelly dump just outside the Coronation Market.
Daraine Luton and Shelly-Ann Thompson
Sunday Gleaner Writers
PALE AND looking despondent, a little boy sits on a plastic chair in a section of the Coronation Market while his mother seeks customers for her produce.
Though being a school day, the child is not in school. His mother secretly tells The Sunday Gleaner that he may be one of the many West Kingston residents infected with the life-threatening disease malaria.
Already, over 50 persons in that section of the country have been confirmed by the Ministry of Health to have contracted the disease, spread by female anophelese mosquito. The boy's mother said he has been tested for the disease and is awaiting the results. There is a strong possibility that the boy may have contracted the disease, which is curable, but at least for now while they await the findings, his mother has to earn her bread at Jamaica's foremost marketplace.
And while the Ministry of Health has not yet lifted the advisory against public gathering in areas which includes the Coronation Market, people still flock the area to buy and sell.
When The Sunday Gleaner team visited the facility on Friday, the vendors with whom we spoke about the conditions of the market made a simple but telling statement: Coronation Market is a public health disaster, waiting to happen.
Stockpiles of garbage lay in almost every other corner of the market, which vendors say remain for days before being cleaned. The sanitary conveniences there is merely a nicely put phrase.
Hundreds of persons use the market on a daily basis. Sellers come from Jamaica's 14 parishes, many of whom over night there. They pay $300 per stall, $1,500 annually for registration fee, and between up to $4,000 per load. Buyers, who are mainly from the Corporate Area, slacken cash in order to take home various farm items including mangoes, oranges, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and tomatoes. But the beauty of foods and the hospitality of some vendors are probably the best thing about being inside the dusty market, which roof is lined with cobweb.
Startling discovery
Irate about the state of the market, a few vendors dared The Sunday Gleaner team to go inside the washrooms. One woman gave the female member of The Sunday Gleaner's team $20 to pay for tissue in order for her to use the facility. The discovery was startling. Water settled on the floor and the scent of urine stained the air.
Inside, there are drums of water piling the walls and bottles thrown into a sink. After using the toilets water has to be taken, using a bucket, from one of the drums to flush the toilet, and poured from one of the bottles for washing hands.
"How that fi clean, when everybody come and hold this bottle after, then use the bathroom, then you go there and hold that same bottle, and is the same drum water we have to use to bathe with," a vendor said.
That is the cleanest of the two female bathrooms inside the place people commonly call 'Curry'. In fact, when the female team member attempted to use the other, which persons were observed going into and out of, she was told by a fat woman at the door: "no, you caan use dat one, it nuh too nice."
Gary Robotom, commercial manager at the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation and who has responsibility for the market says his institution is aware of the challenges.
"All the markets are in need of some amount of repair one way or another and it is (a) challenge sometimes managing the amount of garbage generated, but with the resources that we have we try as best as we can," he tells The Sunday Gleaner.
Mr. Robotom says not having running water is a deliberate ploy by the Corporation in order to save money.
"Traditionally, market water has always been abuse because it is seen as social water. As part of the control mechanism we have had to put in place tanks and other things just to control the abuse of the water supply... At the end of the day it is the KSAC that pays the bills," he tells The Sunday Gleaner while promising to review the situation this week.
The KSAC collect approximately $1.5 million in market and other fees from vendors who use the market. Mr. Robotom says the market is cleaned up to three times per week and for this holiday season it may go up to four times per week.
A woman from St. Ann who vends in the market says she spends four days per week there and cleaning is not done that often.
Meanwhile, some vendors note that they are comfortable with the frequency that the market is cleaned. One woman noted: "Every night they clean the market and then on Sunday it is cleaned. But sometimes vendors, even me do it as well, when we have our trash, instead of carrying it to the heap at the gate, we keep it by our stalls. That cause the pile up of garbage in the market."
Other vendors say some of their colleagues are afraid of speaking the truth.
Food waste
"Look there along the wall how it stay, every morning me have to buy bleach and throw on it to keep down the scent," says a male vendor, pointing to a trench next to his stall that is filled with food waste and paper floating in murky water. "They don't want to talk the truth so something better come inna this market," he says.
President of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), Senator Norman Grant, said occasionally farmers and vendors might cite their grouses regarding the unsanitary condition of the market.
"The JAS has in the past proposed to the administrative government and the parish council to take a serious look on our markets, and I know that the government has plans of restructuring our markets. But what I want is for that to be fast-tracked," he says.
