Craft vendors across the island who have been for years struggling to get a share of the multibillion-dollar tourism pie say that the current coronavirus pandemic has now robbed them of the occasional crumb they would get from the table.
McLennon and 449 other merchants in the popular craft market have been out of business since Jamaica’s strict measures implemented to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the island crippled the tourism industry.
“We sit here weeks after weeks and watch tourists come off the ships, and when you look in the craft market, everybody sleeping because we are the last stop on their itinerary, while others are raking in so much money from the industry,” McLennon lamented, adding that she was longing for the day when Jamaicans would get their rightful inheritance from an industry they built.
We have a man who does vegetables, supplying the craft traders at a cheaper cost, taking some of the burden off us,” Haughton told The Sunday Gleaner.
“We must make these adjustments so that the industry will be viable to us as craft traders, because when tourism is booming year to year, others will be doing real good everywhere else, but the craft traders are yet to give their testimony of having a good day.”
