Vendor harassment ... Fisher wants sellers trained

Councillor Everton Fisher, the former mayor of Black River in St Elizabeth, is making a strong appeal for an anti-harassment component to be included as part of the proposed multi million-dollar upgrading of Scott's Cove (Border), the popular rest stop on the St Elizabeth and Westmoreland border.

While he welcomes and supports the initiative to upgrade Scott's Cove, Fisher wants the vendors to be trained so that they can interact with customers in a manner befitting the charm and beauty of the location.

"When you go there, everybody just fly up in your face, and there is no sort of order or anything," said Fisher, who is the minority leader at the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation. "We must deal with this in a real serious way.

"We put in a new facility. The aesthetics are good, and all that, but it can't be like everybody just flying up on you. I have had the experience where if you don't buy from a few of them, they curse you out," added Fisher, who was supported in his position by Savanna-la-Mar's mayor, Councillor Bertel Moore.

Fisher said that while he understood that vendors sometimes competed to try and make a sale, it could no longer be business as usual, and so some level of training is required for the vendors, especially those who will occupy the 20 new spruced-up stalls.

However, in defending their capacity to operate with the requisite hospitality, the Scott's Cove vendors said that they had received proper training in customer service but agreed that the observation made by Fisher was the result of a breakdown in the system under which they should operate.

"We already got the training," said Sharlene Tate, an experienced fish vendor. "We are supposed to sit down and let customers come and choose what they want, but because some of them say they are big and they don't abide by rules, they run to the cars when customers stop. That is what mash up the system."