Dear Editor – Whilst I am really happy with the city council’s current central market renovations, it is rather unfortunate that no alternative central location is secured, to cater for market goers to continue trading in a centralised location.
Furthermore, the HCC does not tell the public about how long the renovations will go for, hence every market goer is left in limbo about when it will re-open.
This also in essence negatively affects our farmers and food vendors as well, in that they are somewhat finding it rather difficult to plan ahead for when the market will re-open again, especially in relation to their nurseries and harvesting.
An alternative would be for the city council market management to secure Bodo Dettke’s area along the Matanikau river in the interim for market trading to go on whilst HCC are doing their renovations.
I especially sympathize with our rural farmers for not having the opportunity to sell their products en-masse because of the limited spacing in some of the other markets around our suburbs.
Secondly, the financial implications of the market closure I believe had a small negative effect on the cash flow of retailers, wholesalers and market vendors as well, not to mention a small dip on the government’s GST and HCC revenue collections as well for the unforeseen future, while the renovations are ongoing.
On the other hand one might argue that these are the ‘opportunity costs’ for such an undertaking, but for convenience sake, next time please put a plan ‘B’ in place to minimize the impacts.
David Mangeo
Honiara
