While less sanitary street vendors carry on selling
The usually bustling market at Lukyanivska metro metro in the center of Kyiv stood quiet this weekend behind locked gates. Notices threatened fines of Hr 20 for selling on the premises and warned shoppers that the market had been shut down for unhygienic conditions.
A market administrator, however, had a different answer for passersby who asked why it was closed.
‘There’s no problem,’ she said. ‘We’re just closed for repairs.’
Lukyanivska is one of two markets that were shut down last week by the city’s Sanitation and Epidemiological Station for failing to comply with basic hygiene standards. But market vendors and administrators say the real health threat is from sellers who work outside the markets.
The Lukyanivska market administrator, who declined to give her name, said sanitation inspectors had singled out the filthy state of the bathrooms and the absence of garbage-disposal facilities. But she insisted the hygiene demands were not serious and the market would reopen on Tuesday. Workers spent the weekend hosing down the tables, adding a lick of paint to the walls and cleaning the bathrooms, while the administrator showed off a new space for trash. ‘Our market is no worse than any other,’ she said.
Oleg Kostenko, head of the Shevchenko district Sanitation and Epidemiological Station, said both the Lukyanivska and Vinogradar markets were shut down for repeatedly violating hygiene standards. Lukyanivska, one of the city’s oldest markets, was closed down about a year ago for hygiene violations.
The Lukyanivska market administration has been fined six times since then, Kostenko said, while 85 fines and warnings have been meted out to traders and 13 stalls have been closed down. Similar numbers of fines and warnings have been issued to the Vinogradar market.
‘The problem is, it’s cheaper for them to pay a fine than to meet our hygiene requirements,’ Kostenko said. The maximum fine the station can levy is Hr 85.
Kyiv’s seemingly chaotic farmers markets are actually strictly controlled for quality and hygiene, according to market administrators.
‘There are more inspectors than there are workers, from the Health Ministry, the sanitation department, the Agriculture Ministry, and the Ministry for the Protection of Consumers Rights,’ said Irina Titova, head laboratory inspector at the Kureny market.
Each market has its own laboratory and inspectors, who check all produce daily for infection, disease, chemicals and radiation. Private sellers must obtain additional certificates from the Health Ministry. Large markets have their own meat and dairy pavilions with administrators who are responsible for allocating tables and distributing weights and white coats.
In the meat pavilion, sellers bring whole carcasses to be chopped up on site by the market butcher; at end of the day, the cuts are stored on site in refrigerators for an extra fee.
In the cool white dairy pavilion at the Heroiv Dnipra market, women offered tastes of sour cream and honey from the backs of spoons. Next door in the meat pavilion, sellers were smoking and indiscriminately dropping ash as they rolled up huge strips of cured lard at the end of a day’s commerce.
Sanitation inspectors come by several times a week, explained the head of Heroiv Dnipra market meat pavilion, who identified himself only as Valentin. They check that all produce has been properly inspected and stamped by the market’s own laboratory inspectors, that sellers have all the correct documents and that there are adequate hygiene facilities.
Vendors themselves have a slightly different description of the inspectors’ activities.
‘If they come around, it means there’s something to bribe them for,’ said Nadia, a Kyivan who recently tried her hand as a stall vendor in one of the city’s markets.
Kostenko said the controls are not always effective, as 90 percent of all intestinal infections in Kyiv can be traced back to food sold at markets.
Many Kyivans buy their groceries not from markets but from illegal vendors who can be found at street corners and subways throughout the city. Those sellers say they pay around Hr 2 per day to the police to turn a blind eye to their activities, and no one checks the quality of their produce.
Valentin from Heroiv Dnipra said the market’s biggest problem is the impromptu bazaar set up just outside.
‘There’s meat, milk, all jumbled up together on the ground,’ he said. ‘It’s crazy.’
He said the market administration had paid the police and the sanitation station to close down the illegal bazaar, but so far nothing had happened.
Outside the market, the illegal sellers congregate on a muddy patch of ground, their wares laid out in car trunks or on plastic bags on the ground. One man sold old bloody bones from the slaughterhouse.
‘Of course they’re trying to get rid of us,’ said one vendor, as he sliced off the more unappetizing patches of the meat slabs he had laid out. ‘All I can say is, we have to live.’
For the multitude of buyers, the answer was the same. Produce here sells for up to a third less than inside the market.
‘I can’t afford to buy anywhere else,’ said one woman as she inspected some elderly-looking chunks of meat.
