Maravi

Police, council demolish stands in Kamwala

Police, council demolish stands in Kamwala
By Doreen Kambangaji
Thursday April 26, 2007 [04:00]

Business at Lusaka’s Kamwala trading area yesterday came to a halt after state and council police moved in to demolish containers and makeshift stands in the area. The police, who moved in the area in the early hours of yesterday, demolished the containers and makeshift stands after several warnings from the government and Lusaka City Council (LCC) for vendors to vacate the streets.

A check at Kamwala trading area revealed that all the shops had been closed and there was heavy police presence in area. Some shop workers, who sought anonymity, said they had closed their shops fearing that their shops would be looted.

“As you can see there is a lot of tension and the owners of the shops don’t want to risk their goods. These people whose makeshift stalls have been demolished threatened to beat anyone who would open their shop,” said one of the workers.

And some marketeers talked to said they were operating in illegal places because they had nowhere to go.

“The government says they have allocated us legal places but these markets are not enough and some of the markets are not easily accessible by customers,” said a marketeer who preferred to remain anonymous.

A heavy presence of police in riot gear was also spotted in all the streets of town and street vendors who usually operate from the streets were not there.

However, vendors operating in makeshift stands around the town centre were doing business as usual.

The vendors talked to said they would not move because they had been operating from the area for so many years and had been left out after the shops were completed.

“Those shops are too expensive for us. We feel left out because that is our place that they have built those shops on and allocated to people who were not even operating from here. They should have built smaller shops that would have been affordable,” said one of the vendors from town centre.

Local government and housing minister Sylvia Masebo said she was happy that at last sanity was returning to the city. She said she had gone to Kamwala shopping area and also the town centre to see for herself the situation on the ground.Masebo said she was happy to see that the streets were finally opened up and people were going about doing their business without hindrance.

“Our challenge now is to sustain this,” she said.

Labels: KAMWALA, LCC

posted by MrK @ 3:48 AM