IT was business as usual for most illegal vendors in Harare yesterday as they continued to defy government and council orders to move to designated vending sites outside the central business district (CBD).
BY SILENCE CHARUMBIRA
By midday a few vendors had heeded the call to move and taken their wares to the new sites where they complained of low business.
Zimbabwe Informal Sector Organisation director Promise Mkwananzi said members of his association would continue to trade in the CBD until the government has provided them with alternative forms of employment.
“It is business as usual. I am coming from Kwekwe right now and vendors have vowed to stay put until the government provides alternative jobs,” Mkwananzi said.
“In Harare our members are busy reconstructing their stalls that were destroyed by council. We are also going ahead with suing the government and council for wares that were burnt.”
National Vendors’ Union of Zimbabwe board chairperson Sten Zvorwadza said: “They (council) are ill-advised and the government has bought into the confusion and now there is a heap of contradiction with one person saying this and the next another. The new sites that they are talking about are even more hazardous than where vendors are currently operating from as there is dust all over,” Zvorwadza said.
“As a union we are resolute and our members are staying put. Vendors should be protected by the Constitution and those in policy formulation are acting criminally because they are confiscating their goods and brutalising them.”
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But Harare City Council spokesperson Michael Chideme said the local authority was happy that some vendors had heeded its call to move to designated sites.
“We are going with relocations as planned. Where we have removed vendors, they have not come back.There were people at the new site at Coca-Cola (at the intersection of Seke Road and Cripps Road), there were people at City Sports Centre and there were people at Copacabana. We are happy with the progress so far,” he said.
