by Nick Delgado

Guam - A task force assigned to crack down on violations at the flea market met this afternoon and are sending a warning to vendors they'll be back this weekend. The Flea Market Task Force is giving vendors another heads up they mean business and will be back at the Dededo site this weekend.

During this afternoon's meeting it was reiterated that one of their main concerns is the buffer zone in front of the old Butler Building where vendors and tour buses are not allowed. Municipal Council member Joe San Nicolas said, "That is an established buffer zone and whoever owns the property have to put a sign so people know it's a buffer zone and not a place for you to sell and those are some of the things we have to take a look at."

The property is government owned, and the Mayor's Office already cleaned the area. Servino says the problem is the task force is having to conduct constant follow-up inspections because vendors aren't taking them seriously. "Saturday we did a good job and there was only three vendors there, and I came Sunday and the same vendors we asked to take down their stuff came back and put it back up when there was no enforcement so that's why we need to come there on regular basis to enforce this," he said.

During their recent inspection DISID issued at least twenty citations for accessibility violations, Public Health met with 34 vendors, more than half of whom did not have sanitary permits. Public Health's Tom Nadueu says a handful of vendors who had permits had the wrong type or were operating in the wrong location. Those vendors were recommended to cease operations immediately.

GFD also conducted enforcement. Fire Inspector Joey Manibusan said, "They did issue some notice of hazard and we are working with the mayor to reevaluate the layout of the legal flea market on increasing and meeting the fire code requirements for the department's accessibility issues."

Other issues task force members are contending with include vendors that were given legal approval to operate years back but these same vendors are not operating in compliance with current law. "The issue if these grandfather permits and exclusions, and we need to do a better job at regulating ourselves and the government has to be consistent, they cannot gave waivers and we found that when we did inspections a week ago where we found out there were things that occurred that shouldn't have occurred and we said who issued this permit, this shouldn't have happened," he said.

The task force will rove the flea market along with Guam Police this Saturday to continue education and enforcement.