Harare unfurls CBD vendor blitz

Source: Harare unfurls CBD vendor blitz – DailyNews Live

Helen Kadirire  10 October 2017

HARARE – Harare City Council has begun its citywide blitz to remove all
vendors and pushcarts from the central business district (CBD).

Acting town clerk Josephine Ncube said every vendor who wishes to trade
within the city centre should be registered with the local authority.

Ncube’s statement comes after President Robert Mugabe said the vendor
menace in Harare will become a thing of the past as government was moving
to get rid of them.

“We adopted a framework for the renewal of the city through de-congestion.
We currently have about 20 000 vendors in the CBD. Some of them had been
registered to operate in the various suburbs and designated sites but they
have abandoned their sites.

“The framework is to make sure that vendors are relocated to the sites
they are supposed to be and to decongest in terms of kombis operating in
the CBD. For vendors they will be registered and allocated sites- some
within the CBD but others within the districts from where they will
trade,” she said.

Ncube said vendors were blocking roads.

“It is a criminal offence to obstruct traffic and the traffic police will
be dealing with that. We will be policing during the day and deep into the
night. We want to tackle the basics of dealing with effective policing
and management of garbage.

” As long as we have removed the vendors from the street, it means all
those who are shelling their peas on the street will no longer be there,”
she said.

Ncube added that because the vendors work deep into the night, the city’s
mechanical sweepers have been redundant as they cannot be used while
people are still trading.

She also said all pushcarts will be driven out of the city centre and all
those doing wholesaling will be moved to Mbare and Lusaka markets.

Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation director Samuel
Wadzai told the Daily News that council should first provide the vendors
with adequate designated sites to trade.

He added that forcing the traders off the streets will not solve anything
but instead will create chaos similar to what happened in 2015.

“Council should do an assessment in respect of the consequences on the
livelihoods of more than 100 000 people and their dependents and the
problems the evictions will cause.

“Vendors are not going anywhere any time soon. The president should also
be reminded that people are not in the streets because they want to but
because of his Machiavellian macro-economic policies that have brought us
to this stage. There is nothing illegal about vending because he (Mugabe)
created it,” Wadzai said.