KINGSTON and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) is losing $166 million in market fees each year and a big chunk of that money could be going into the pockets of extortionists operating in the municipality.

Mayor of Kingston Andrew Swaby on Thursday bemoaned the market fees not being collected by KSAMC as he expressed concern about the state of some of the facilities.

“We don’t get a subvention from Government to fix our markets, so it is out of our own source revenue — and I am sure Councillor [Dennis] Gordon will speak to that. What ‘own source revenue’ means is the market fees, and I will agree with you that the market fees are low…and we have a problem with persons who are competing against us — and I am talking about the extortionists,” said Swaby.

“So, we want to fix up our markets, but you can understand it will take some time. But, at the same time, within the first 100 days we have allocated $25 million where we have started to fix seven bathrooms [in the markets] because we believe that our bathrooms should be in a state where both our vendors and our buyers can use them. And the ones that we have fixed, we even have showers in them to make sure that the vendors can have a bath…” added Swaby who was elected to lead KSAMC in the February 26, 2024 Local Government Elections.

He was supported by Gordon, who heads the KSAMC Finance Committee, and outlined to the meeting the extent of the market fees being lost by the corporation.

“The mayor also spoke about the renaissance in fixing the markets. We cannot continue the way we have been over time. We are losing $166 million a year because of poor market fees,” lamented Gordon.

“If we were to cap that over the last five years we would lost just about $900 million. Think about what that $900 million could have done to regularise and rationalise our market district. It is indeed a service that the KSAMC must provide, but we need support to fix it because everyone of us uses the market district.

“But it is not sustainable to continue to lose $166 million per annum from market fees,” added Gordon.

The two were addressing a town hall meeting dubbed ‘Bringing the Budget to the People’ at Merl Grove High School on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew.

According to Swaby, the town hall meeting was staged in keeping with KSAMC’s core values of transparency, integrity, and accountability and will be from where it will present its budget to citizens annually.