MONTEGO BAY, St James — By December street food lovers should be able to know if vendors they patronise in Montego Bay are allowed to handle food.

Under the St James Municipal Corporation’s Safe Food Programme, approved vendors will have identification and be listed on a website. To accompany the initiative, at least two new sanitary conveniences will be built in the western city, Deputy Mayor Councillor Richard Vernon told Thursday’s monthly meeting of the corporation.

“Members of the public will be able to go onto the St James Municipal Corporation website and see the food operators who are registered under the Safe Food Programme,” he said.

“They will be identified by bibs and given QR codes so persons can even scan the jackets that they’re wearing, and go to the website and see that these persons are registered,” he added.

He anticipates that the Safe Food Programme, which is now being rolled out, will be “in full operation” as “we approach December”.

“We are looking at an area in the heart of downtown Montego Bay to transform into a major sanitary convenience location and we’re also looking at another section close to Fort Street area to rehabilitate that space so that they can have access to sanitary conveniences,” he told journalists after the meeting.

Vernon told the Jamaica Observer that the focus will be on rebuilding an existing public toilet on Albert Lane in the town centre and the rehabilitation of one now languishing unused at Fort Street.

Both areas, he noted, are popular locations for night-time street vending.

“We understand that we cannot just have persons operating out there and not having access to the sanitary conveniences,” said the deputy mayor.

The overall goal, he said, is to get all vendors up to standard. There are an estimated 300 food vendors on the streets of Montego Bay.

“It’s [about] establishing safe food zones, registering these vendors, assessing the location where they’re operating, and also creating a catalogue that will be available to the public,” Vernon said.

“Once we roll out this programme — which we are in the process of doing now and we have to finalise some details — we have to ensure that we finish the necessary infrastructural work to facilitate this operation,” he added.

According to him, the project has been in the works since 2022 and is unrelated to the shocking video of a crab vendor relieving herself in a bucket behind her stall at Crab Circle in Kingston.