MONTEGO BAY – Yet another attempt is being made to streamline Montego Bay’s craft sector and industry officials think it actually might work this time since all the city’s major players – as well as the craft traders themselves – have come onboard to embrace the thrust towards change.

A committee has been established, headed by Mary Helen Reese from the Tourism Product Development Company, to push through existing plans to get a licensing regime in place. The next step will be to train the craft traders and then upgrade their facilities.

The new thrust came out of a meeting, held in Montego Bay last week, between the traders, the tourism ministry, the police, and the city’s business interests.

The committee is to provide a plan of action on the way forward by next week.

“The craft traders have asked for more assistance with management of the market and more discipline in the market. We already have the licensing thing working but we are going to tighten up on it,” explained state minister for tourism, Wykeham McNeill. “Only the people who have licences should be operating. (That rule) was effective since last December (so now) we are going to implement it, tighten up, get the discipline (in place).”

There has been some resistance, in the past, to the implementation of the licensing system, which some traders see as a method of excluding them from the industry through which they now eke out a living. The licensing process, which includes certification by TPDCo, is fairly simple but a handful of traders have resisted it.

According to Observer sources, there is a fringe group of traders who still harass visitors, despite repeated warnings that they are damaging the industry that feeds them. The hope is that once the industry is overhauled, it will be free from harassment, the markets will be clean and welcoming and the licensed traders will see an increase in sales as a result of all these elements.

According to McNeill, this latest thrust will work because the traders now realise that in order to survive, they need to make some changes in how they do business.

“They are actually saying to us that they want a better environment; they are calling on us,” he said.

“Everybody is going to come together and work with it and tighten up the thing and the craft traders themselves will be given some role in this,” he added.

Among the suggestions made to date is one that speaks to organising the traders into groupings that are effective enough to come up with a business plan and source funding.

But one of the pressing concerns, now, is the management of the facilities, which fall under the purview of the St James parish council. At the Harbour Street craft market, for example, the traders handpicked the current manager but now they are expressing concern about his and the council’s effectiveness.

“The council needs to address management issues at the facility. We don’t mind if they manage it, but they must have a good manager and good persons working (for example in security),” said the association’s president Melody Haughton.

But she is optimistic that there will be significant changes made as a result of the recent meeting.

“We highlighted the problems we are having so they are putting in things to work, recommendations were made by interest groups that the market needs funding, it needs to be upgraded properly, it needs a proper management and marketing system,” she explained. “This is one of the few meetings (where there was frank and open discussion). The problems that the traders are having were highlighted and the problems of the government were highlighted.”