The Sunday Mail
Government will not back down on ridding the cities and towns of illegal vendors, a Cabinet minister has said.
In an interview last week, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister, Dr Ignatius Chombo said Government has urged local authorities to engage the vendors first before removing them from the streets.
Dr Chombo said although they were urging local authorities to come up with alternative measures, which would slow down the process of ridding illegal vendors, the operation was still going on.
“A lot of people are moving into the CBD of our major cities and towns to look for markets but they are doing so without the authority of the local authorities.
“They are actually vending without paying,” Minister Chombo said.
“They are inconveniencing the shopping public by blocking street pavements and entrances to shops and this is what we are against.”
“So we are saying to the local authorities in their books, in their statutes, in their by-laws there are already laws to deal with these people. We are now asking them to engage them and find amicable ways to remove them.”
“We are also aware that the majority of our people may be unemployed and they are looking for whoever can buy their wares so that they can scratch a living and we are sensitive to that.” Dr Chombo added that the measures might not be lucrative or the best for vendors but it was better than leaving them without selling points. Harare City Council recently announced that it would temporarily shelve plans to remove vendors operating from undesignated points in the central business district giving reprieve to thousands of illegal operators in the city.
This came after the Council had announced its intention to remove informal traders from undesignated sites a fortnight ago following a Government directive to all local authorities. Harare Mayor, Cllr Bernard Manyenyeni said the local authority had temporarily halted the operations to look at other possibilities on how to deal with the illegal vendors. “We are digesting it, we are looking at it and how the minister’s directive is implementable and we are still evaluating the possibilities,” he said.
“By this we mean that removing illegal vendors by stopping them from setting up their wares everyday might be a possibility just as much as negotiating with them to move to designated sites might also be a possibility. “We want a clean city, so does the minister but we want to do it in a realistic and practical way. So for now, we are not removing them.”
A number of vendors have invaded street pavements, road islands, road intersections and car parks in search of lucrative markets.
Though the 10 designated sites in the CBD can only accommodate 6000 vendors, over 20 000 vendors are trading with only 10 000 registered with the local authority.
