WESTERN BUREAU — The St James Parish Council will next Thursday unveil the new strategy it will use to remove the over 50 vendors who are still occupying the Old Shoe Market site in Montego Bay.

“The vendors have been resisting but we have decided on a course of action that will be made known next Thursday,” secretary/manager, Christopher Powell, told the council’s monthly meeting on Thursday.

More than two weeks ago the Montego Bay City Council, a committee within the St James Parish Council, gave the vendors notice to relocate to the People’s Arcade along Howard Cooke Boulevard.

But the vendors have defied the order and have vowed not to operate from the arcade.

They maintained that that location is not economically viable and have pointed to a lack of proper security and inadequate sanitary conveniences there.

But on Thursday, Powell insisted that all the areas of concern raised by the vendors have now been addressed.

“They have gotten all they have asked for. We have put in adequate security, proper lighting, the water is on and we have also satisfied the area of sanitary conveniences,” Powell said.

He added that he, along with superintendent of road and works, Tubal Brown, and police superintendent Newton Amos recently visited the arcade and were satisfied with the existing conditions.

Powell explained that over the past two weeks, the council had decided to use ‘moral-suasion’ to get the vendors to vacate the premises in a move to avoid confrontation with them.

But that approach appeared not to be working and has clearly left the council obviously embarrassed.

At Thursday’s meeting, the secretary/manager made it clear that the vendors will have to move as “the council is going to take the necessary steps to have them removed”.

Powell however, did not give a timetable for the vendor removal, nor did he say what further action the council will take.

When pressed by the Observer to disclose what steps will be announced next Thursday for the removal of the vendors, the secretary/manager said he was keeping those details “close to my chest”.

One week before last Christmas the vendors were allowed to occupy the Old Shoe Market site, as part of the council’s initiative to rid Montego Bay’s streets of illegal vending.

They were initially given until January 31 to vacate the temporary site, then the deadline was extended to February 25, as repairs were made to the arcade.