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Ven­dors in down­town Port-of-Spain say sales have been much slow­er this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. They are blam­ing the de­cline on the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade to­mor­row.

Asha­ki Pierre, who runs a small sewing shop in Drag Mall, told Guardian Me­dia that sales of her fes­tive na­tion­al clothes have been slow this year. She said, “It’s not as fast as be­fore, like last year, but peo­ple are still buy­ing. Giv­en there is no in­de­pen­dence pa­rade and no fire­works as be­fore, they are buy­ing, but not as be­fore.” She’s now turn­ing her fo­cus to Re­pub­lic Day with the hope that the sales in­crease be­tween the hol­i­days.

An­oth­er ven­dor, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Kevin, sells chil­dren’s dress­es in red and white on In­de­pen­dence Square. He said, “Nor­mal­ly, this is what we do every year for in­de­pen­dence, but be­cause we don’t have any in­de­pen­dence pa­rade this year, the sales have dropped. It dropped bad. The re­sponse isn’t nice. Every­body is com­plain­ing. We bought the ma­te­r­i­al, and the ma­te­r­i­al is still at home. All that we have right now, no­body is buy­ing.”