ST ANN’S BAY, St Ann — The St Ann Parish Council is facing opposition from market vendors across the parish who are against pending increases in fees.

Vendors from the St Ann’s Bay Market staged a public demonstration against the pending fee hike on Monday, and yesterday their colleagues from Brown’s Town took similar action, as opposition to the planned fee hike grows.

The vendors said the increase in the weekly fees is exorbitant and that they were not prepared to pay the sums proposed.

The increase will see vendors in the beef market in St Ann’s Bay paying a weekly fee of $1,000, up from $500; the fish market from $450 to $1,000, while persons operating kitchens would now have to pay $3,000 weekly. Other fees range from $750 up to $3000.

Beef market vendors in Brown’s Town and Ocho Rios markets will see their rate moving to $1,500 weekly as of next month, $500 more than their counterparts in St Ann’s Bay.

The parish council is scheduled to meet today with a representative from each section of the St Ann’s Bay Market to discuss the fee increases.

“Six hundred dollars we use to pay and now a $3,000 we have to go pay. It can’t work,” one vendor who sells in an open section of the St Ann’s Bay Market told the Jamaica Observer.

The vendors from that section of the market complained that they had to build their own shops as well as provide their own electricity and water.

“No light, no water, no bathroom. No way it can work. If they had put $400 on the $600 we would pay it,” another female vendor added.

“How could I change from $600 to $3,000? [It is] just a little syrup I am selling here and a little juice; that’s all. From $600 to $3,000, Oh God man,” a vendor, who identified herself as Janet, said.

She said she had to be going out on the streets to get customers to go into the market and so the increase would not be fair to vendors like her.

“The council doesn’t have us in mind because they don’t treat us good; them just send the paper come with the (increased) fee,” another vendor said.

Notices with the new fees were reportedly posted in markets across the parish last Friday.

However, while the vendors are claiming to be surprised about the fee hike, chairman of the St Ann Parish Council and Mayor of St Ann’s Bay Desmond Gilmore said the council had discussions with Dunston Whittingham, president of the Vendors Association, over a month ago when the new fees were proposed.

Whittingham, the mayor said, was expected to present a counter proposal within a week of that meeting. However, he said that up to Monday the council had not received the proposal. Having received approval from the Ministry of Local Government, the mayor said the council decided to put the new fees into effect on June 1.

“We need to operate as a business and I think we have failed in that regard. We looked at it; we have been discussing it from as far back as January/ February this year. A month-and-a-half ago we came up with a proposal in terms of increases in fees for the various markets,” Gilmore explained. “There is no doubt that there needs to be an increase,” he added.

According to the mayor, the last fee increase at the St Ann’s Bay Market was in 2005, in 2004 for Ocho Rios and in 2010 at Brown’s Town.

“… The Council has had to be subsidising much of these entities to the tune of millions of dollars per year. We are talking 12, 13, 15 million dollars per year. We cannot continue at this stage and then still be able to provide the kind of service or provide the kind of environment that is conducive to sale of goods and services. We have no option at this time but to effect an increase,” Gilmore insisted.

The increase, he explained, varies according to the market and also to the sections of the markets.

“We have weekly rates that is moving from $300 to $1,200. At the same time, we have another weekly rate moving from $1,150 to the same $1200,” he said.

According to the mayor, the Council is now streamlining its fees according to sections of markets occupied as previously fees were charged according to size of space occupied.

“Once you are in a particular area, the fee structure is the same,” Gilmore said.

Vendors, however, believe the new arrangement is unfair.

“It not fair. Some people occupy bigger space than some; they can’t expect us to pay the same thing,” said a vendor who gave her name only as Jennifer.