FALMOUTH, Trelawny — The Trelawny Municipal Corporation (TMC) has dismissed claims that it has been anything other than professional and even-handed when it served a stop notice on construction being done on the side of a section of the busy North Coast Highway.

They were reacting to 30-year-old Rushane Taylor’s complaint on social media that he is being unfairly treated. Taylor sells balusters and concrete columns on a section of the highway in Hague, Trelawny. The area is a hot spot for motor vehicle crashes.

On Wednesday the young entrepreneur, who has a similar operation in St James, told the Jamaica Observer that he was being targeted because he was asked to sell his business to an influential individual in the parish.

However, mayor of Falmouth and chairman of the TMC, Councillor C Junior Gager told the Observer that the municipal corporation is on a drive to rid that busy corridor of business establishments.

“There is a problem along the highway. It will turn into a commercial hub if we don’t act. We just did an operation along the stretch and we removed quite a number of people. Even one man who had two containers, we asked him to remove them. We had taken someone to court to remove a bar and a demolition is supposed to be done by the owner. So we can’t have two standards,” the mayor said.

“He is doing an illegal building on the roadside and the NWA [National Works Agency] is not giving an entrance for him to exit off the highway. That is the main problem,” he added.

Taylor expressed disappointment that he has been served notice after investing $4.5 million and securing a five-year lease for the space on which he operates.

Rushane Taylor says he is being unfairly targeted, a claim the local authorities have rejected.

However, Gager questioned the validity of his lease. He said Taylor is yet to provide documentation to substantiate his claim.

“He needs to show us a lease, not just flipping a paper. Show us the lease document from the person who he leased the land from. We haven’t seen that. We have served the documents and we are asking him to come in and make sure the thing is rectified,” the mayor urged.

Taylor’s argument is that he is operating from an old Toyota Coaster bus, not a building, and the columns and balusters which surround the old bus are mere decorations.

“Mi don’t need a permit. It’s not a structure, it’s a Coaster bus mi put down. It’s a Coaster bus. They say mi must draw plan. What mi going draw? A Coaster bus? Mi just put the columns around it. Them say mi must leave. Mi a beg them two years. If mi get two years and mi mek back mi money and mi leave. They don’t want me at Trelawny, that’s fine, but mi naa go sell mi business,” he said.

Gager conceded that the young man’s work is of good standard but insisted that he needs to find a more appropriate location from which to operate.

“Other persons that were removed from the highway are coming to us and asking how can we allow that to happen when they were moved,” the mayor said.

Taylor, in the meantime, is appealing to anyone who he thinks can help, including Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

“This is Jamaica, and the prime minister, he’s the one who inspired me. Mi look and see how the man talk, it motivate mi. So you can imagine someone motivate you and the same people who motivate you a carry you down? Mi look up to the prime minister because mi love the thing. Me naw tell no lie, the economy good. And I tell everybody things a go on good,” Taylor said.

“Mi think the prime minister should come down here come see what mi doing, see the kind of work what a youth doing in Jamaica. Product of Jamaica! It has never been done in Jamaica’s history. Nobody never do what me do. It should have been a tourist attraction,” he added.

-Horace Hines