Charles Kong Soo
While there are nine chair rental companies operating on Maracas Beach, Jamelia Williams, manager of Livin Trini, is the only company licenced to operate on the beach and recognized by the Ministry of Tourism. She is the only second generation rental chair operator, the company having been started by her father, Jimmy Williams. She is also the lone female chair rental operator among the nine chair vendors and was easy to spot on the beach.
Williams said in terms of beach chair vending, Maracas Beach was a new and improved look for tourism in the country, but it had become very overpopulated due to a lack of regulations. She said the situation had been ongoing for several years even during the now dissolved TDC's (Tourism Development Company) tenure.
Williams said at the time, TDC authorised only her rental company to operate on the beach and there were two unregistered groups. Today the numbers have grown. She was the only one paying a rent to the Government up to last year.
She said unfortunately as Livin Trini was the only branded company, it bore the brunt of the negative comments about the beach chair issue at Maracas. Williams said she received hate messages on Facebook and 'bad comments' such as her chairs should be torched again like last year's incident in December when she lost 112 chairs and her tent was stolen on the beach.
She said without proper regulations and intervention by the ministry, the situation will continue to worsen as more players will come with no fear of the consequences for their actions.
One of the “new kids on the block”, Nicholas Alexander, 29, from Maracas, an employee of Nat's Beach Rentals, also wanted to give his perspective on the services the youths from the community provided and the challenges they faced in the industry.
Alexander said “On this side very hard, when you go to town to work for $150 a day, time you eat and travel, that money comes like next to nothing.”
Alexander said it was because of the beach chair operators' presence that there were no robberies, theft, missing cellphones or bags on the beach, they didn't tolerate those activities as they also lived in the area; it came like they did the job of the police.
He said he had 15 years working in the industry, it was a 'set of nonsense', and the police were not doing anything. He agreed that operators should not blanket the beach with their chairs.
The young entrepreneur, who said poor people had to make an honest living, added that people came down on him for his outspokenness.
