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Video: Vendors defy police as deadline nears

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HUNDREDS of informal traders operating at undesignated sites in Harare yesterday defied a police ban and breached an anti-riot police barricade as they marched towards Parliament Building where they presented a petition demanding to be allowed to continue selling their wares in the central business district.

HUNDREDS of informal traders operating at undesignated sites in Harare yesterday defied a police ban and breached an anti-riot police barricade as they marched towards Parliament Building where they presented a petition demanding to be allowed to continue selling their wares in the central business district.

BY MOSES MATENGA

Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo early this month ordered street vendors to move to the designated sites by tomorrow or face unspecified action.

However, the vendors have vowed to ignore the deadline arguing that the designated sites cannot accommodate all of them and do not have adequate sanitary facilities.

As the deadline drew closer, members of the National Vendors’ Union of Zimbabwe (Navuz) marched to Parliament defying the heavy police presence along the way.

Some of the vendors could be heard hurling insults at police officers who attempted to block the march.

“You want to start a war by what you are doing. Do you know that the Tunisia uprising was started by a vendor?

“Your wives and girlfriends are vendors, but you are being used to fight them, why? Are you not ashamed of yourselves,” charged one of the vendors.

Sylvia Zata, one of the vendors who was being pushed in a wheelchair, later presented the petition to Parliament, which was received by Acting Clerk Nomasondo Tsunga.

“We are presenting this petition to say to government they should first give us jobs before ordering us out of the city centre,” Zata said.

“I have been a vendor for some time now and taking me out of the streets is something that will destroy my life.”

Tsunga said she would deliver the petition to relevant officials.

Watch here:

Navuz board secretary, Justine Manayi told Tsunga that it was not the vendors’ choice to be in the city centre.

He said the Zanu PF government had failed to create employment opportunities for the majority of the country’s population.

“Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo declared that on June 26, all vendors are going out of the city centre,” he said. “We are against that because we are not here out of our own will, but because there is no employment. Government must address the economic woes in the country first.”

Bulawayo East MP Tabitha Khumalo (MD-T) later joined the vendors and challenged the government to provide the 2,2 million jobs Zanu PF promised in the run-up to the 2013 harmonised elections.

“As the MDC-T party, we are saying in the 2013 elections, you promised the people 2,2 million jobs, but up to today, not even one has been provided,” she said.

“What we are saying is give these people jobs and if you can’t give them, protect them as vendors and stop victimising them.”

Zanu PF is leading the fight to remove vendors from the city centre with groups aligned to the ruling party urging their members to observe the deadline.