| Thursday February 21, 2019 KITWE MARKETEERS WANT MORE SPACE

Kitwe City Council (KCC) should work towards creating more trading space to accommodate street vendors trading on the land owned by hotel Edinburgh on the one way street of Chisokone market, marketeers have said

Association of Vendors and Marketeers (AVEMA) President Able Chikwa also said the local authority should improve service delivery and clear heaps of garbage and stagnant water in various areas.

The council has maintained that it was illegal for vendors to trade on the land owned by hotel Edinburgh on the one way road by Chisokone market. Council police have since started chasing the vendors from the area. On the other hand, Kitwe District Commissioner Binwell Mpundu had issued a guidance to the management of Hotel Edinburgh to allow vendors up to April as government was looking for an alternative place for the vendors. But barely a day after his advice, council police officers went and roughed up vendors and hawkers trading on the Hotel Edinburgh land on the one way road of Chisokone market.

In an interview in Kitwe yesterday, Mr Chikwa said the motive of the local authority to remove street vendors from the city centre was to make it clean, but the city was now worse than before. "We expect the local authority to channel its efforts towards effective service delivery, but what we are seeing is something else.

The city centre looks dirtier than it used to be.

He said the vendors on one way road near the Hotel Edinburgh would not move until alternative land was found for them.