Mobile vendors emerge in city

05 Jul, 2020 - 00:07 0 Views
Mobile vendors emerge in city Vendors sell their wares from car boots in Nketa recently

The Sunday News

Vincent Gono, Features Editor
LEVEL TWO of the Covid-19 lockdown regulations that the country is in stipulates that businesses should operate from 8AM to 4:30PM and that has not been a problem. All formal supermarkets and other shops in the country have adhered to that without questions in addition to basic health stipulations such as use of hand sanitisers, wearing of masks and temperature checks.

Even those that have licences to trade 24 hours have no choice but to forgo a bigger chunk of their business hours.

And what it means to the shopping public is that they need to do their groceries with timeous planning.

However, the sheepish adherence has only been limited to formal traders who can open and close their doors and who can suffer the risk of licences being revoked for non-compliance.

On the other side however, the lockdown regulations have seen the emergence and proliferation of mobile vendors in the city that are taking advantage of the stipulated trading hours of shops and supermarkets to sell their wares to late shoppers.

This however, is done at the expensive cost of people’s health as they have no basic hand sanitisers and are often not strict on wearing of masks and yet they allow people to touch their wares and sometimes leave without buying.

The vendors sell wares such as groceries, fresh farm produce, food items that include confectionery products, chicken cuts, milk, matemba, eggs and even packed fresh beef from car hoods either close to popular bus stops or at shops in various suburbs such as Pumula, Cowdray Park, Entumbane, Luveve and many other suburbs in the city’s medium and low density areas.

And the situation is not confined to Bulawayo alone.

All other towns and cities are facing the same predicament and this is happening at a cost to the local authorities, the shopping public and the vendors.

The local authorities are not getting anything in terms of revenue especially after displacing all the vendors in town as part of measures to arrest crowding that was promoting a fertile breeding ground for coronavirus.

There is an increased risk of people getting not only coronavirus but other diseases that come with uninspected food products and the difficulties associated with tracing the cases from the source in the event of a coronavirus attack.

“What we do here is that we get spill offs from the shops but we get real business after 4:30PM when shops are closed. We service late shoppers most of whom would be left with no choice but to buy from us.

“Our prices are quite fair because we have a strict emphasis on cash although a number of us are now gravitating towards the US$ and the rand,” said Mr Njabulo Dube who was selling an assortment of goodies from his car boot.

He said they were aware of Covid-19 but they couldn’t resist looking for money because at the end of the day bills were supposed to be paid and food was supposed to be brought to the table.

“It’s not a casual approach as you may want to put it. It’s totally out of the desperation of our situation. We are forced to do everything we can to ensure we survive to see another day.

“It will not be fair for the authorities to embark on running battles with us, it will only add to criminal activities in the city as people will be trying to make ends meet,” he added.

He said some of the people who were doing that were working in various Government departments.

“We have police officers and other employees from various Government departments who are supplementing their salaries through vending especially those that are selling from cars.

“We also have others who are just surviving on vending who usually set up their stalls in their yards. It is a battle between life and death.

“If we stay at home the families will die of hunger and that is a fact but if we go out, we are exposed to the virus yes, but that is not always a fact, it’s on a scale of probability,” he added.

Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association (BVTA) executive director Michael Ndiweni told Sunday News in an interview that they were aware of the proliferation of people who were vending from their cars in the Central Business District (CBD) and in various suburbs.

He said while it was true that the vendors were causing a health risk to the many families that they were serving and revenue loss to the city council, there was nothing that they could do because their livelihoods were anchored on that and the coronavirus scourge was making it an intense battle of life and death.

“We know there are vendors who are selling from car boots at strategic places in different suburbs.
They are taking advantage and bridging the gap left by the shops that close at 4:30PM as per lockdown rules. Those places are not allocated for that purpose by the local authorities but people are capitalising on the delay by the city council to give places for that purpose.

“However, most of the people who are doing mobile vending are not ‘real’ vendors, they are people with professions and are trying to supplement earnings through vending but yes, they are risking spreading the virus but there is little that they can do, times are hard.

“The city council should expedite the allocation of vending space to the vendors. There should be a clear framework from the local authorities on the way forward so that it also benefits from license fees,” said Mr Ndiweni.

Bulawayo Mayor Councillor Solomon Mguni admitted that there was still a problem in the allocation of vending spaces in the city due to lockdown and a critical shortage of resources but said they were working to ensure that there was decentralisation of the vending from town to the suburbs.

“Our idea of decentralisation has been taken a step further by people who are now putting up vending malls everywhere where it is strategic.

“Our worry however, is not just that we are unable to collect revenue but the diseases associated with unregulated trading in food items, the people’s health.

“Right now, there are diarrhoeal problems in the city and tracing them is difficult where people are doing everything everywhere without regulation.

“We are however, going to consult and engage the stakeholders on the way forward. Admittedly it may not have started well but we are working on correcting all that for the benefit of our residents.

“We do not want to engage the police because things are hard and people are suffering but we want to engage the vendors and map the way forward that will also see our city not being a hotspot for coronavirus and other diarrhoeal diseases,” said the mayor Clr Mguni.

He stressed the need for the vendors to be conscientised on the need for them to ensure compliance with lockdown regulations as well as value the health of their customers despite the hard times that the country was facing.

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