Councillors block reopening of Fifth Avenue market

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
BULAWAYO councillors have blocked a move to reverse a council resolution barring informal traders from operating along Fifth Avenue saying the road should be opened for human and vehicular traffic.
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic the local authority passed a resolution to have informal traders moved from the area to new designated areas on the outskirts of the Central Business District (CBD), as part of  measures of containing the Covid-19.

This also resulted in the closure of the then popular khothama, a flea market which operated during weekends and holidays next to the Revenue Hall.

However, two years after the resolution, the local authority has had no joy in getting rid of the informal traders operating along Fifth Avenue as they continue to defy the directive arguing that the sites identified by council were far away from their targeted clients.

The identified sites were a spot near the Highlanders Football Club clubhouse and another at the corner of Lobengula Street and First Avenue. Some of the traders are meant to move into Egodini Bus Terminus once rehabilitation works are complete.

Council also created vending bays in suburban areas with safe markets initiatives being implemented like the  Nkulumane District Shopping Centre Fruits and Vegetable wholesale market.
According to the latest council report that was tabled before a full council meeting last Wednesday, in a bid to solve the chaos along the street, council management had proposed the official reopening of the street to accommodate informal traders.

“With the coming of Covid-19, council on 3 June 2020 resolved that 5th Avenue (stretching from Robert Mugabe to Lobengula Street) be closed off permanently to any form of trading and henceforth the closed street be re-opened as a public road that accommodates two-way traffic as per the Roads Act provisions.

“Despite the fact that this whole process was consultative, disgruntled informal traders took the matter to court. The court dismissed their application and upheld the Council’s resolution of opening the road for vehicular traffic. There had been an application from informal traders to close off 5th Avenue for informal trading activities, in light of the discussions around 5th Avenue, four options exist. The options are informed by the need to strike a balance amongst a multifarious use, that is parking, informal trading and vehicular traffic and the property owners,” reads the report.

The first option tabled would be to maintain the existing bays prior to Covid-19 and leave the planning area with 880 informal trading bays, the second having the planning area with 952 informal trading bays occupying parking bays on both ends of the planning area.

The third option suggested is that the area will have two riding lanes and parking bays to the north but with 557 informal trading bays, while the final option is to maintain the status quo of opening up 5th Avenue to vehicular traffic without any consideration of informal trading activities.

Management was reportedly pushing for the adoption of option three where they argued that the advantage of this option was that it leaves the area with fewer vending bays and would accommodate all the users including property owners even from the southern side would be able to park their vehicles in close proximity to their working spaces.

However, councillors in the ensuing debate dismissed the move by management instead noting that reversing the earlier decision would seem as if they did not know what they were doing as they had clearly stated their intention to bar off the road from the informal traders.

Acting Mayor, Councillor Mlandu Ncube said what was dangerous with the move was that it would appear as if the local authority was regularising an illegality.

“We cannot create a problem by trying to solve another problem, in this city we are clear that 5th Avenue is a road, people must drive along that street. When that street was closed there were people operating there, whom we consulted properly and gave them bays somewhere else, some unfortunately did not get because of the limited space and went home.

“Suddenly, despite this resolution we woke up to people now operating there and two years after we are failing to remove these illegal elements, now we want to regularise those illegal elements, that is dangerous. We will create a problem, with our people who were originally trading there, we can only start talking about that area when all offenders have left,” said Clr Ncube.