HONIARA City Council’s Market Master reveals there is no immediate plan to address the overcrowding situation in the Honiara central market.

Over the years to date, overcrowding of the Honiara Central Market is a grave concern to venders, and it is obvious the vicinity is lacking space.

The current road expansion project is also engulfing more space, adding to the problem.

With this situation, the Market Master for Honiara City Council Mr Jimmy Hanson Riunga simply said there is no immediate plan to address the problem.

Mr Riunga said there is a long term plan HCC is discussing for a mini-market in east and west Honiara, but that will depend very much on finance.

Mr Riunga said at the moment they are improvising with the limited space that they have in the market complex, which also includes usage of the car park for selling purposes.

He said they did not have any other alternative to expand the market complex unless to build a story building but both sides is not possible but still it depends on Council’s finances.

Therefore this issue is very challenging for them, Mr Riunga said.

“Perhaps main cause is acquiring of land—to quickly find land is one big problem where it is hard to quickly find a piece of land in any place of Honiara’s two end—east and west to solved situation currently going on.

“I want to call for the public to try patients with us; in fact we also see same issue and opinion from people how market should be, we just cannot find it easy for accommodating people but we will try as much as possible to ensure everyone use the market have fair chances.

“Bear with us let’s hope that if things turn out well Council will able to build mini-markets outside of the city to ease overcrowding in the market,” Mr Riunga said.