After almost two weeks of noisy protests and never-ending meetings between the government and the Valletta open-air market (monti) hawkers, an agreement has finally been reached, with the hawkers agreeing to relocate the market to the site proposed by the government, and the government accepting the hawkers’ proposal to temporarily relocate their stalls to Freedom Square as from today.

As from 7 June, the market will be located on the stretch of Merchants Street between Old Theatre Street and Archbishop Street, as well as part of Old Theatre Street where a few hawkers already used to have their stalls.

The new location includes the area just outside the historic Valletta market (Is-Suq tal-Belt), which is being cleared of its trees and

levelled out to accommodate the hawkers’ stalls.

By the time of the move, the new area is expected to be neatly surfaced and safe to work on. The paving will be laid at a later stage, when the open-air market will again have to be relocated to Freedom Square for “a few days”, according to the Investment, Industry and Information Technology Ministry.

In a statement issued after the agreement was signed yesterday, the ministry said the government would be paying for new stalls, which would be made specifically to improve the appearance of the open-air market and they would also be made to size, in line with legal parameters.

The government said this would give more value to the heavy investment it was making to embellish and pedestrianise Merchants Street and other streets in the centre of the capital.

Meanwhile, the street hawkers will be able to put up their stalls in a designated area in Freedom Square, which they have occupied since Monday night.

Over the last few days they have parked their vans in the square and put up a few empty stalls in protest. While making as much noise as they could, they asked passers-by for some spare cash since they were “not being allowed to work”, and they asked people to sign a petition.

On Monday, 7 May, the government ordered the hawkers to temporarily relocate their stalls to St James Ditch, while the multi-phased Merchants Street project was underway. All last week, the hawkers gathered at the entrance to the ditch, but did not put up their stalls as a sign of protest. They even organised three protest marches along the central streets of the capital. Their objection to St James Ditch was that setting up their stalls there would lead to a fall in custom.

Now that an agreement has been reached, the UHM, which represents the 115 Valletta hawkers, said the government has agreed to provide and maintain street signs giving clear directions to the area where the market will be allocated next month.

The government will also make available Lm120,000 to buy back 12 licences – Lm10,000 each – by the end of this month. The decision as to which licence holders will give up their licences will be the prerogative of the UHM and the hawkers themselves.

The government and the union also agreed that a committee should be appointed to analyse the logistics of the permanent site when the open-air market begins operating from there. The committee, which will consist of four members, will be able to make suggestions to the authorities regarding improvements to the site.

The UHM said it believed that an agreement could have been reached much earlier, had the government been more open to the requests and concerns of the hawkers.

It was the government’s rigidity that had prolonged the issue unnecessarily, it said, and the union had had no alternative but to take certain decisions such as organising peaceful protests in defence of its members.

The UHM thanked all those who had expressed solidarity with the hawkers by signing the petition and donating money. A total of Lm500 was collected during the hawkers’ protests and this will be donated to Dar tal-Providenza in Siggiewi, the UHM said.

Meanwhile, in two separate statements, the Malta Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises (GRTU) and the General Workers Union (GWU) expressed satisfaction that an agreement over the relocation of the open-air market has been reached.

The GWU had long been expressing its solidarity with the hawkers and had even signed the hawkers’ petition, saying everybody had a right to a decent income and standard of living.

The GRTU, which also organised an extraordinary general meeting on the issue of the open-air market yesterday morning, said it had been insisting that the hawkers should accept the new site for relocation of the market.

It said the new site was established after a long consultation period and nobody had the right to change it. The other arrangements that form part of the agreement between the government and UHM are all in line with what the GRTU had been insisting upon over the years.

During the GRTU’s extraordinary general meeting, director-general Vince Farrugia said the most important thing was to improve the overall appearance of Valletta, since this was in everyone’s best interests.

He expressed satisfaction that Merchants Street was being embellished. Being the second most important street in Valletta after Republic Street, it was finally being given due importance, he said.

Mr Farrugia said statistics clearly showed that the majority of people entering Valletta were not really interested in the open-air market, but the GRTU still believed that it played an important role in the capital, as long as the appearance of the stalls and the hawkers’ wares was up to standard.

Mr Farrugia said that the type of action taken by the hawkers and those who represent them, who chose to “try to make a noise to get what they were after”, is a thing of the past and could never be tolerated.

Furthermore, he said, the GRTU had had to resort to legal action to address the “intimidation” with which shop owners in Merchants Street were being faced, as hawkers approached them to sign their petition.

In a judicial protest filed against the UHM and the Valletta street hawkers’ committee, the GRTU claimed that shop owners had had no choice but to sign the petition, as they received direct verbal threats from the hawkers.

While the chamber called on the police to investigate the hawkers’ actions, in the judicial protest the GRTU declared that it was holding the union and the hawkers’ committee responsible for the damage sustained and any damage that could be sustained due to the hawkers’ abusive and illegal actions.

The judicial protest was signed by Dr Jan-Karl Farrugia.

Another statement issued by the Valletta Alive Foundation said it fully supported the government in its decision to relocate the open-air market further down Merchants Street.

VAF was one of many organisations that were consulted by the government on proposals for a pedestrianisation zone in the capital.