Maravi

(LUSAKATIMES) Masebo gives Maketeers 24 hour ultimatum

Masebo gives Maketeers 24 hour ultimatum
Posted on July 22nd, 2008

Local Government and Housing Minister Sylvia Masebo has issued a 24 hour ultimatum to Marketeers trading at Potters Cooperative Market in Livingstone’s Nottie Broadie area to vacate. Ms Masebo said the marketeers need to vacate the premises within 24 hours or face the wrath of the police. Ms Masebo who was accompanied by Southern Province Minister Daniel Munkombwe was speaking in Livingstone on Tuesday when she made an on the spot check at the area that marketeers have illegally turned into a market in Nottie Broadie.

She maintained that the place where the marketeers were trading from was not a market and that it could not be turned into a market because it was earmarked for something else according to the council Livingstone City Council development plan.

Ms Masebo noted that there was no way marketeers could wake up and decide to allocate a trading place to themselves without the approval of her ministry.

She said if everybody was allowed to turn any place into whatever suited them, that would bring chaos in the country hence the need to follow the laws.

She told the Vice-Chairman at Potters market Samuel Mwaba that he should correctly advise his people to move or they risked loosing their merchandise when the police move in.

Ms Masebo assured the marketeers that she would give the Livingstone City Council extra resources to ensure that Libuyu Tandabale market that has been designated as a new trading site is turned into a habitable place.

” I will give the Livingstone City Council extra resources to turn that market into a habitable place. What is important is that I want laws to be followed. If you say that where the market is there are not toilets, I will give you money.

”Im not for cheap voting now. You will not do anything at will because you are voters. If we dont respect the laws we make, there will be no order in the country,” she said.

Earlier, Potters’s market vice-chairperson Samuel Mwaba pleaded with the Minister to rescind her decision because the bridge in Libuyu was impassable during the rainy season.

He also noted that the marketeers paid K50 million to the owner of the land that they have turned into a market.

Mr Mwaba maintained that the area in Libuyu was not suitable for trading adding that it was also too small to accommodate all marketeers.

But Libuyu Tandabale Market chairman Joseph Kanyanga said the market was not too small and accused the marketeers who have insisted on trading at Potters market of being against the government.

Mr Kanyanga charged that the people who had refused to move to the new Tandabale market were bent on bringing confusion.

The Marketeers were early this year moved from Maramba’s Tandabale market to pave way for the construction of over 60 housing units for police officers.

They were later allocated a new market in Libuyu since the land they were occupying in Libuyu belonged to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
ZANIS/FM/ENDS/MM

Labels: DANIEL MUNKOMBWE, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, MARKETEERS, SYLVIA MASEBO

posted by MrK @ 5:17 PM