As the biggest spending season of the year draws near, vendors at the D C Tavares market on Spanish Town Road are uncertain of where they will go and what will become of them.

On Friday, the vendors were formally turned out of the market, which has been the source of their earnings for many years, and they say no one – neither from the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC), the organisation that managed the premises, nor the National Housing Trust (NHT), to which the property has been ceded – had come to discuss anything with them.

“Right inna di Christmas season when wi get likkle sale an ting an dem just put wi out like dat. So for di Christmas season wi don’t know how wi going to manage,” complained Pauline Brown.

Brown said she was the sole breadwinner for her family, which includes six children.

The vendors, many of them elderly, are protesting against the closure of the market by the KSAC and the failure of the NHT to hold talks with them about their relocation.

“We don’t have anywhere to go, for nobody don’t come and say anyting to wi to say dat wi going to move from here to there. Nobody don’t come talk to wi and we have been paying market fee up til last week,” said Brown.

“If wi get place fi guh, we wi guh, but dem cyaan just do wi so. A long time wi out yah. Dem did sey one lady from NHT fi come talk to wi today (December 1) but all now she nuh come yet,” fumed Norma Francis.

However, public relations director for the NHT, Donovan Francis, said he was not aware of any such meeting.

Contacted by the Sunday Observer, Town Clerk Lincoln Evans said that the market, which is in the vicinity of the violence-prone Majesty Gardens community, was closed to facilitate the construction of houses under the NHT’s Inner-City Housing Project.

As partners in the project, the KSAC transferred the land to the housing development company as its contribution.

But for vendor Francis, who has been selling ground provisions at the market for 46 years – during which time she gave birth to nine children, the youngest of whom is 23 – the manner in which both agencies had allegedly treated them was unfair.

“Dem don’t treat wi good. We pay market fee an wi pay daily fee and this is the bad (treatment) wi get, ” she complained to the Sunday Observer. “If dem di even come an seh by the 15th of January we must move out, but dem jus come drop it pon us like dis an nuh tell us where wi must go.”

Managing director of the NHT, Earl Samuels, responding to questions by the Sunday Observer, said there were plans to house the vendors on KSAC lands located on Majesty Pen Road across from the existing facility.

It was not clear whether those plans were communicated to the vendors.

In the meantime, the vendors insisted that while they had known since July that the market was to be closed, they were not given a specific date and that it was only last Tuesday that they were told of the December 1 date.

“I wasn’t looking for such a short notice,” said 69-year-old Victoria Bennett, who has been vending at D C Tavares for almost half her life and travels home to St Mary on weekends.

“I wouldn’t mind if we could stay ’til even the end of December,” said the elderly woman, making reference to the festive season and the increased sales that go with it.

Another frail-looking woman referred to the D C Tavares market as her “saltin’ pan” without which she has nothing.

Under the Inner-city Housing Project, 96 two- and three-bedroom units will be constructed in the four-storey walk design typical of the low-income complexes built so far.

Construction has already begun with the clearing of land to the back of the present market building and should take 10 months, according to the NHT’s estimation.

The current selling prices for houses under the project range from $1.1 million (for two-bedroom units) to $1.3 million (for three-bedrooms).