A last-minute order to clear street vendors from two major Kingstown thoroughfares has sparked public uproar and exposed a visible rift between the Kingstown Town Board (KTB) and the national New Democratic Party (NDP) administration, just months after the party took office on a platform that framed street vendors as economic partners rather than public nuisances.
On Wednesday, September 9, the KTB made an unexpected announcement via social media, ordering that all vending activities on Bedford Street, Bay Street and adjacent sidewalks would be halted just three days later, on September 12. Vendors operating in the restricted zones were instructed to relocate to existing authorized market stalls or submit new applications for designated spots, with the KTB framing the move as part of routine efforts to keep the capital clean, orderly, and accessible to all. The abrupt, short-notice order caught both vendors and the general public completely off guard, as it directly contradicted the formal policy Prime Minister Godwin Friday had laid out earlier this year, 100 days into the NDP’s term.
Within 48 hours, the KTB reversed course. In a second post to the same social media platform this past Friday, the board announced the planned eviction would be “stayed until further notice” to allow for additional consultations with affected vendors and community stakeholders. Deputy Prime Minister St. Clair Leacock, who also serves as the Member of Parliament for Central Kingstown (the electoral district encompassing the capital), clarified the reversal on his personal Facebook page, emphasizing that the move was far more than a temporary pause. “It’s a firm Halt awaiting our comprehensive plan for the redeveloping and refurbishing of Kingstown,” Leacock wrote. “Vendors have a special place in our hearts and with proper consultation a central role in our developmental plans. Stay tuned.”
The rapid back-and-forth has prompted widespread questions about coordination between the KTB and the central NDP government. Notably, KTB’s acting warden, Noel Dickson, was the NDP’s South Windward electoral candidate in both the 2015 and 2020 general elections, deepening public confusion over the misalignment between the town board’s order and the national government’s stated approach.
Long before this week’s confrontation, street vending has been one of the most divisive ongoing policy issues in Kingstown, spanning multiple successive administrations. The NDP defeated the long-ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) in November 2024, and from the opposition benches, Friday had already staked out a clear, contrasting position on vending policy. In a July 2025 address when he still led the opposition, Friday tied the prevalence of informal street vending to the country’s ongoing challenge of high unemployment, noting that vending is most often a last resort for workers who cannot find formal employment in the stagnant local economy.
“People think that vending is so easy,” Friday said at the time. “These are people who are trying to make a living.” He argued that the government’s responsibility was not to sweep vendors off the streets, but to integrate them into the formal economy, rather than treating them as an unwanted problem to be eliminated.
After taking office, Friday doubled down on that vision during a March 6, 2026 interview with Hot 97 FM, framing his administration’s planned overhaul of Kingstown not as a “war on vendors” but as a broader effort to build a more livable, vibrant capital. He rejected the framing of vending as an inherent public nuisance, instead emphasizing that “I see vendors as people who are looking for work.” He described street vendors as some of the most driven, entrepreneurial people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, arguing that their energy should be structured and supported, not erased. Friday’s long-term vision for Kingstown reimagines the capital as a mixed-use residential and commercial hub where people choose to live and linger, rather than just a daytime commercial center that empties out by late afternoon. He has said that revitalizing the capital starts with centering people, not blanket prohibitions.
The ULP, which held power for over a decade before the 2024 election, took a far more hardline approach to informal vending. Then-Minister of Local Government Julian Francis framed unregulated street vending as an existential threat to the capital’s functionality, arguing that unlicensed stalls blocked pedestrian walkways, swallowed up scarce public parking, and created general chaos in the city center. By Francis’ count, the government identified between 750 and 900 street vendors operating in Kingstown by 2022, and the ULP administration built three new market facilities with roughly 270 authorized stalls to relocate vendors off the streets. In November 2022, then-Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves oversaw the removal of more than 800 vendors from Kingstown’s streets after opening two new city markets, declaring that all public streets in the capital would be cleared of informal vending by the end of that month.
Following this week’s reversal, the KTB acknowledged the critical role that street vending plays in the local economy and in supporting thousands of Vincentian households, noting that “any effort to improve how Kingstown is managed must therefore be undertaken in a manner that takes these realities into account.” The policy pause leaves the future of hundreds of street vendors in limbo as the NDP government works to align its long-term development vision with on-the-ground implementation, bringing the long-running debate over Kingstown’s vending policy back to the forefront of national politics.