The Constant Spring Market Vendors

by Rev Dr Garnett Roper

Dr Garnett Roper is the President of the Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS). He earned his PhD in Theology at The University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and his subject of research is the Development of a Caribbean Public Theology.

This bit of real estate is too expensive to park cars, it is too expensive for a hairdressing parlour to afford. “ “

34 An external view of the entrance to the Constant Spring Market in St Andrew. Photo by Marlon Reid via loopjamaica.

regard the fight for the vendors of the Constant Spring Market (CSM) who were eventually dispossessed and evicted as one of the most consequential struggles in a long ministry. There was no natural affinity between my work and the vendors of the CSM, when the saga first began. One might say, I rather stumbled upon it. The Government had signed a USD21M contract with the Chinese Engineering Company (CHEC) to re-construct three major corridors in the City of Kingston. Those corridors included the Mandela Highway, which was being widened to become a six-lane highway, the Portia Simpson Miller Square to Half Way Tree (via Hagley Park Road) corridor and the Old Stony Hill Road to Dunrobin Avenue (via Constant Spring Road) corridor. The project was designed by the previous political administration (PNP), the financing was also secured by them, from the China Exim bank.

The modernising the road infrastructure as well as running sewer main, renewing the public utilities infrastructure (including water, electricity and fibre optic cables) was an idea whose time had come. There was no gainsaying the fact that this was a badly needed project, for the sake of the modernisation and the increase of economic efficiency of the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR). And one might say the project therefore enjoyed bi-partisan support. The issues that arose therefore had to do with the implementation of the project and the choices made that left in its wake as casualties and collateral damage, and left behind many of the people at the base of the population.

In the first place, the Government sought to implement the reconstruction of the three corridors, simultaneously and with that caused overwhelming dislocation and traffic nightmares. As the Government calculated it, this was a minor inconvenience that will be soon forgotten once the reconstruction was completed and the benefits are enjoyed. The second issue had to do with the perceived lack of consultation and the lack of the provision of timely and needed information. The approach was a “take it or leave it” one. It has been suggested that this approach allowed the Government the freedom to bargain tough with landowners from whom easements needed to be purchased, without being distracted by public glare or collective action.

The most egregious outcomes from the reconstruction projects were the economic and social re-engineering of the City and its resultant demographic shifts in the hue of those that owned businesses along the corridors. Almost without exception by the time the project was completed, marginal and small businesses and vendors had suffered irreparable financial damage. The corridors were widened to become four-lane dual carriageways with massive concrete medians between the traffic in either direction. Businesses without adequate parking on site (which are invariable small businesses) were forced to close or to relocate. Perhaps, the most consistent casualties were vendors who ply their wares along these corridors. This is the context in which the treatment meted out to the vendors in the Constant Spring Market is to be assessed.

The Constant Spring Market (CSM) was built in 1965 in an upscale area of St Andrew. It was built on a site where peddlers of ground provision and vegetables did their vending. It was unorganised and by 1965 the local government authorities saw the need to erect a market on the site. Ground provision markets in Jamaica are enormously significant to the Jamaican story. It must be borne in mind that during chattel slavery, the owners of plantations in Jamaica largely remained in England and elsewhere in the North Atlantic. The estates or plantations that were owned by them were managed by solicitors, in the absence of the owners. These solicitors did not always afford to feed the enslaved with imported food. However, they developed the clever practice of allotting to the enslaved, provision grounds that were the marginal lands on the periphery of the plantation. The enslaved were allowed to farm these marginal lands for their subsistence before sunrise in the morning when work began and after sunset at evening time when work on the plantation had ended. The enslaved were so prodigious that the yield from these marginal plots of land was more than they could consume.

The surplus from their plots began to be traded on Sundays in what were called ground provision market. Incidentally, these Sunday markets gave the enslaved, for the first time, access to cash during the period of chattel slavery. (This is why the Parish of Trelawny became the first Parish with a Black member of the Legislature.) In the 19th Century voters were from the Property tax roll. Because of the Sunday Markets, enslaved people were able to acquire property. As soon as slavery ended, a former enslaved was elected, to become a member of the legislature representing the Parish of Trelawny. He was elected by, mostly, other formerly enslaved persons that had also acquired property.

Neville Salmon removes a nail from a piece of board that made up his tyre shop. Photo via jamaica-gleaner.com.

Constant Spring Market on Friday. Photo by Marlon Reid via loopjamaica.

This fact has made ground provision market significant vehicles for economic participation for members of the underclass, and for social and economic mobility for the people of African descent. To this day in Jamaica, these markets are the primary outlets provided by the states for black entrepreneurship to thrive. Every municipality developed in 20th century Jamaica was developed around the ground provision market. The exception to this was the city of Portmore, a municipality that has a mall, but does not have a market.

After it was built in 1965, the Constant Spring Market steadily integrated into the life and community of Upper St Andrew. It provided a farmer’s market access to Jamaican staples and vegetables. But more than that, a ring of small business and artisans also became service providers in precincts of the CSM. These included a variety of cook shops and bars, barbers, seamstresses and tailors, tyre repairs, lawn mower repairs, and cell phone repair shops and the like. It was also a place where children sheltered from the rain.

Importantly, this is where the helpers and gardeners who worked in households in Upper St Andrew got their breakfast. (The restaurants and shops in the Manor Park strip mall and in Manor Centre are not opened early enough to catch their early morning commute to their jobs and the times when they need to be refreshed). Also, they cannot afford the shopping for anything in this part of St Andrew, so the CSM was their outlet. It was also the place to refresh the Caddies at the nearby Constant Spring Golf Course.

There were 78 vendors and service providers that earned their livelihoods through their businesses located at the CSM. At least two families that I know of had vending or service operations that were not only inter-generational but the one had given birth to the other. A market vendor had sold there from before the market was built in 1965 and her daughter had developed a similar business along with her in the last ten years, when her attempts at employment elsewhere had failed. There was a shoemaker, his wife had a different business, a small haberdashery, I believe and his daughter, a high school graduate had developed a liquor business with a significant turnover.

Before the road-widening project commenced in 2018, during the 1990s, then Eagle Merchant Bank had built a multi-story Crown Plaza hotel a top the hill overlooking Manor Park directly above the CSM. From the view afforded by the hotel that was later acquired by the US Embassy in Kingston for residence of Americans working in Jamaica, the CSM was unsightly. The proper remedy ought to have been a refurbished market by the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Authority (KSAMC) that owned the CSM. The issue that was to be decided, however, was whether or not this was the best location for a ground provision market.

How one answers this question depends and on one’s philosophy of development: Is the goal of development to cater to one set of citizens at the expense or to the exclusion of others? Or should development aim at social cohesion and social inclusion? Is the outcome of development to be towards a society in which every person has their own vine (orange tree) and fig (bread fruit) tree and a little child shall lead them and no one will make them afraid on God’s holy Mountain? (Micah 4.4) Or is development for the few but not for the many? Clearly, I believe that development is for the many not just for the few and the desired outcome of development ought to be human flourishing.

Gwendolyn Bailey, a vendor in the Constant Spring Market, making her appeal for a proper relocation plan on Monday. Photo by Ricardo Makyn.

Everyone in the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR) was affected and inconvenienced by the US21M project to fix the corridors referenced above and to modernise the public utilities and telecoms infrastructure along those corridors. The plight of the market vendors first came to my attention when a student of Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS) where I am the President told me about them. She herself had been a former candidate for the political Opposition, the PNP, in a previous election for Member of Parliament for the political constituency in which the CSM was located. She had been unsuccessful in those elections and the vendors in the CSM were not among her political supporters. She however was appalled at the fact that they had been given less than three months to vacate the CSM despite having plied their wares there for decades. I invited a delegation of vendors to my office to explore the issue of a proper notice period for them according to law. Some 40 of the 78 vendors turned up. Kameka Livingston urging the authorities to allow the vendors to occupy the space at the back of the Constant Spring Market. Photo by Ricardo Makyn.

I met with them. My executive assistant at the time was a young attorney, Daynia Allen. She had been previously employed in the chambers of Knight Junior and Samuels and still had a few matters at those offices. She concurred with me that proper written notice was a minimum requirement of the law. All of the vendors were duly paid up and properly licensed by the KSAMC that owned the markets and were entitled and enfranchised by law to conduct business in that space. I invited senior counsel and well-known litigator with an interest in constitutional law but a practicing criminal lawyer, the erudite jurist Bert Samuels. Bert tells the story himself; he was from a poor neighbourhood in that part of St Andrew, the son of a preacher man, his grandmother had been a market vendor. He took the case pro-bono.

All that was required from each vendor was for them to pay USD45 as some form of retainer to ensure that the attorney could act on their behalf. Then Daynia Allen from my office instructed by Bert Samuels from the distinguished firm of Knight Junior Samuels set about securing an injunction barring the National Works Agency (NWA) from demolishing the CSM before written notice and a proper notice period were given to the vendors.

The injunction was successful and lasted for a period of about nine months before Mr. Justice Leighton Pusey lifted the injunction after the notice period given was lifted on a balance of interests. However, this was not before the public media had come on board with sympathetic articles in the interest of the CSM vendors. The CSM vendors and our cause on their behalf got expressions of public goodwill from a wide cross section of the society, we got the assurances of the PM, we got support but not the expenditure of much political capital from the political Opposition.

However, Dr. Angela Brown Burke, former Mayor of Kingston, then Opposition spokesperson on Local Government made repeated visits to the CSM and joined us in meeting with the vendors. Ironically, we did not get any support from any of the church, neither from those congregations located nearby to the CSM nor from any church lobby groups.

We demanded the following three things through our lobby efforts: first we sought permission for the vendors to remain on the land. The road widening required only 62 of the 262 feet wide parcel of land. We argued that if the market vendors were allowed to remain a modern market could be accommodated and include the vendors and service providers along with the widened thoroughfare. Both the KSAMC and the NWA rejected this request, though the land still remains vacant for the time being. We suspect it will in time be given to those with nature’s passport.

The second thing we asked was for the vendors to be relocated to parcel of lands in that area of Constant Spring, since this is where their customer base existed that they had built over decades. This also was rejected. Perhaps because “this bit of real estate is too expensive for parking;” and I might add, for vending. These are the words of the CEO of the NWA, a personal friend of mine, E G Hunter. He celebrates the fact in a conversation with me, and perhaps deservedly so, that this was one of the largest public expenditure without any public scandals associated with it. I disagree with him because of the scandalous mistreatment of the market vendors and other small businesses along all the corridors.

The third option was that the vendors should be paid compensation, sufficient to allow them to continue their businesses elsewhere. We proposed a minimum sum be paid to each vendor of USD4,500. We also proposed that vendors who had been there for more than ten years be paid a further USD450 per year for each year above their tenth year. This also was rejected. The KSAMC however, offered relocation grants of between USD900 and USD2,200. Most vendors gratefully accepted the one-year extension for which we fought and the measly sum they received as better than nothing.

One vendor, Mr. Livingston, whose wife and daughter were also vendors in the CSM, has rejected the settlement offer. He was the shoemaker and had been there for 47 years. By his own account, he had spent USD7,300 building his shop with the permission of the KSAMC. It would be self-betrayal if he accepted USD1,800 as compensation. He has retained the services of Bert Samuels of Knight Junior Samuels to continue his legal battle. The other vendors have been scattered like ashes, with the dust of the demolished CSM, alutha continua!

Demolition work being carried out at the Constant Spring market. Photo via jamaica-gleaner.com.