Scott calls for expansion of ENDS to include more small businesses
Published:Wednesday | May 19, 2021 | 12:08 AMRuddy Mathison/Gleaner Writer
Spanish Town Mayor Norman Scott has thrown his support behind the Government’s e-commerce National Delivery System (ENDS), and is now calling for the platform to be expanded to include corner shops, groceries and more small restaurants.
Speaking at the monthly general meeting of the St Catherine Municipal Corporation last week, Scott said that local government authorities could collaborate with organisers to coordinate logistical arrangements for the implementation of ENDS in Spanish Town.
“Yes, it can be a good programme if the small people are benefiting,” the mayor stated.
“The small corner shops who sell to the man who can only afford a pound a flour, a gill of cooking oil and a pound of chicken back is at a disadvantage and have been suffering badly during these COVID curfews – a system could be worked out to include them in the ENDS programme,” he asserted.
The web-based ENDS enables quick-service restaurants and delivery stakeholders registered on the platform to operate during the COVID-19 curfew hours until midnight in Kingston; Portmore, St Catherine; and Montego Bay, St James, by facilitating online order and delivery.
The approved vendors for the roll-out of the pilot were large franchises and medium-sized restaurants.
Scott said the way to do this is to have the owners of small groceries and restaurants, as well as corner shops register with municipal corporations and get the necessary documentation so that photocopies can be given to the delivery persons to show the police when confronted.
“Most people, if not everybody, have a cell phone, even a banger. They could call the shop and local restaurant owners and put in their orders, and a delivery man on a bicycle or motorbike, for those who can afford one, deliver the items in the communities where these small businesses operate,” Scott suggested.
According to Scott, if the persons who conceptualised the application had the interest of the small man at heart, they would have arranged for their involvement so that they could also benefit.
“I am therefore urging the powers that be to recognise the ineffectiveness of this programme to the small-business community, and create the changes necessary so that the ordinary corner shop can benefit.”
Scott’s proposals had the overwhelming support of the majority of the councillors attending the general meeting.