By SANFROSSA MANYINDA
THE Kitwe City Council has warned people posing as political cadres and collecting money from vendors and marketeers on the pretext that they would help them trade on the streets, to stop or face the law.
The council says it had received many reports on activities of this nature from marketeers and vendors.
Council Public Relations Manager Chola Mwamba maintained that no vendor or marketeer will be allowed to return to the streets.
Ms Mwamba said the council would ensure that people respected the Presidential directives on this matter.
She said the council had resolved to relocate the traders and vendors who were trading on the streets back to Chisokone Market.
“This decision follows a plea by marketeers in Chisokone Market that the traders and vendors who moved to the streets were disrupting businesses in the market and were also inconveniencing owners of buildings whose corridors have been illegally occupied by vendors.
“The owners of buildings and the general public have complained to the local authority about street congestion affecting parking spaces for shoppers and increasing littering which is posing a risk of outbreak of diseases especially with the onset of the rain season,” she said.
Ms Mwamba said the council had secured alternative trading spaces for all the vendors operating from PicknPay, Shoprite and Salvation Army premises on Matuka Avenue and appealed to the self-imposed street vendors to return to the market.
She said the local authority invited applications from vendors who claimed not to have trading spaces in the market to register with the council for allocation in October this year.
Ms Mwamba expressed displeasure that despite the repeated appeals from the local authority, some vendors had continued to resist relocation and had started constructing makeshift structures on road reserves and even on top of drainages with impunity.
She said that while the Markets and Bus Stations Act No. 7 of 2007 provided that a local authority may, on its own motion or on the application of any person, club or Cooperative, designate any place for a specified period as a market street, there was currently no council resolution permitting street vending in Kitwe.
Ms Mwamba said doing so attracted the sanction of the Act as read together with the Local Government (Street Vending and Nuisances) (Amendment) (No.2) Regulations, 2018.
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