Bulawayo City Council (BCC) is pushing for the relocation of scores of informal traders operating in the city centre, with the Town Clerk Christopher Dube warning that worsening congestion, poor sanitation and disorder are threatening the city’s functionality.
Speaking during a joint tour to assess the city’s vending crisis, Dube referenced recent remarks by the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, Dr Daniel Garwe, who described Bulawayo, Harare and Chitungwiza as being in the “Intensive Care Unit” due to mounting urban management challenges.
Although the city has had several attempts prior to initiating the process, there had been concerns raised by vendors that they may lose their customer base if they move to some of the designated sites, especially those that are on the outskirts of the CBD.
“The Minister of Local Government announced that Bulawayo and other cities are in the ICU. As leaders, we need to look into that together and try to correct some of these issues,” Dube said.
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Dube noted that uncontrolled vending is one of the major challenges facing the city and urged authorities to take decisive action.
“We are in a very sensitive moment now. Let’s take a decision now and push it to move almost immediately. We need to clean the city,” he said.
Dube highlighted that council surveys show that about 4 100 vendors are operating in the affected areas. He said many of them could be accommodated at alternative designated trading sites, such as the Bhaktas’ vending site that the council has already identified.
“The site has the capacity to accommodate about 2 000 vendors, while other locations are also being prepared. If they go there, people will know where to find them when they need to buy their commodities,” he said.
Minister of State and Devolution Affairs for Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, Judith Ncube, concurred that the matter had to be dealt with quickly and decisively. She noted that operating at undesiganted areas further posed a health hazard even to the consumers who buy products from the vendors.
“Council must move with speed to restore sanity and ensure that streets, pavements and public spaces serve their intended purpose. We need to have a joint emergency meeting with the relevant ministry, joint operations command, together with the representatives of vendors,” she said.
“While coming here, we saw a woman with an infant. She was changing the baby’s diaper. Immediately after so-doing she continued to wipe her cucumbers. This is not the way that people should conduct their business, we need to have better facilities with more humane services.”
Ncube further raised concern over the increasing number of trucks and delivery vehicles conducting retail business in the central business district instead of making deliveries and leaving.
“If you look at the trucks that are always at the market place, we should find out why they are parked there? Why can’t they deliver and go? But they do their sales, they have automatically become retail shops,” she said.
While advocating for stricter regulation, minister Ncube acknowledged the importance of consultation and engagement with vendors.
“There is no harm in us putting our heads together as people of Bulawayo so that we can both come up with a possible solution that will make us happy as leaders and make those who are doing vending happy as well,” she said.
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