LIVINGSTONE COPS SHUN STREET CLEANING EXERCISE
SECURITY wings in Livingstone yesterday reportedly snubbed the local authority’s pleas to get rid of street vendors as part of the city’s cleaning exercise.
Meanwhile, security wings who had been asked to help council police to move the street vendors, snubbed the local authority by staying away, allowing the vendors to protest peacefully.
SVF Provincial Chairperson Fredrick Sakala told the Daily Nation in an interview that the decision by the council is unpopular and that it was aimed at decampaigning the Patriotic Front (PF) government especially that the city has not recorded any cholera cases.
“The council should have sensitized the vendors over what it intends to do. As vendors’ foundation, we came up with the program of cleaning the city of Livingstone every after two weeks and we have been doing it… this program started last year in June but it was hijacked by a group of PF cadres and calling it the Keep Livingstone Green,” he said.
And street vendors yesterday held a peaceful protest and asked the local authority to stop chasing them without offering alternative trading places.
Street Vendors Foundation (SVF) protested at the Civic Centre hoping to seek audience with either the City Mayor Eugene Mapuwo or Acting Town Clerk Gertrude Chibiliti over the local authority’s decision to chase vendors from the streets.
The foundation in Southern Province has challenged the Livingstone City Council to put its house in order and stop harassing its members by chasing them from the street when they have been instrumental in the Keep Livingstone Clean Campaign since June last year.
“As you know our association comprises members from political parties and so, when the acting DC came back into office last year, we engaged her since she was aware of our program and that is how we started cleaning again. We hold this exercise twice in a month,” he explained.
“We heaped the streets with garbage but the council the is failing to collect this garbage. My people volunteered to help but still the council is failing to bring vehicles that will collect the garbage,” said Mr. Sakala.
Mr. Sakala said, “My members want to live and survive by selling on the streets and that is why his excellence President Edgar Lungu said that when relocating vendors from the streets, councils should find places where they can trade from.”
He said that in the case of Livingstone, there was no place where vendors can go to because the modern market and the bus terminus are not completed.
“Places where these people are trading from were designated by the same council for them to trade from, so how does the council just wake up and say we want you to move out. Where are they going to go? Let the council put its house in order rather than harassing my people over its failures,” he said.
“This is not fair and since our people here are not being empowered and have nowhere to go to, then this will result in some of them engaging in illicit activities such as prostitution and criminal vices,” he said.