Customers who went shopping at the meat pavilion of the Riga Central Market yesterday found closed doors. They may have been saved from danger. The State Construction Control Bureau (GBKС) decided to prohibit further operation of the pavilion starting June 11, as the building no longer meets the requirements for safe operation.
Currently, the Riga City Council is urgently seeking ways to allocate funding to reinforce the roof structures of the pavilion, while the company "Rīgas nami", which manages the Riga Central Market, is developing scenarios to provide tenants with other trading spaces.
Vendors interviewed by the newspaper "Latvijas Avīze" admit that they are unpleasantly surprised by this turn of events; however, since personal safety is prioritized over product sales, they expect prompt action from the company managing the Riga Central Market to find new and suitable trading spaces within the market without unnecessary delays. They point out that they will ultimately incur financial losses that no one intends to compensate.
"I feel like I’ve been thrown out of a boat. We urgently need to find a place to sell our goods, but since meat has a very short shelf life, it will be very difficult to do so. This decision should have been communicated in advance, at least a week ahead, so that vendors could prepare and not purchase products," says vendor Svetlana, who received the notice of the pavilion's closure via email the evening before.
"This is an abnormal and even cynical attitude towards tenants who have been working here for several decades and honestly pay for their trading space," concludes the meat vendor.
The chairman of the board of "Rīgas nami", Ojars Valkers, promises to discuss compensation for losses with each entrepreneur individually, noting that the ban from the Construction State Control Bureau (GBKС) applies to public functions and trade; however, access to the products in the pavilion is not prohibited. The head of "Rīgas nami" acknowledges that the meat pavilion had to be closed earlier than planned, and until now, the enterprise had relied on the previously established operational deadline set until May of the following year.
"Given the conclusions of construction specialists, there is a real and previously unanticipated risk of the destruction of certain structural nodes, which may threaten the safety of people in the building," emphasizes the statement from the GBKС regarding the technical condition of the meat pavilion. It explains that the decision was made based on the findings of a technical inspection of the building, which established that significant corrosion damage had occurred in the support nodes of the load-bearing steel trusses of the meat pavilion's arched roof. ("Latvijas Avīze")
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