The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Saturday, November 14, 1992 — The Bulawayo Hawkers and Vendors’ Association has blamed the city council for the city’s vending problems.

In an interview yesterday, the HVA chairman, Mr Bernard Dabudabu, accused the local authority of building markets in places that were not suitable for business.

Mr Dabudabu’s outbursts come soon after the city’s director of Housing and Community Services, Mr Isaiah Magagula, expressed concern that vending had got out of hand in the city as vendors had abandoned council-built markets to operate illegally all over the city.

“The council markets are abandoned because the council did not consult the people when it built them. There is usually no business at most of these council markets”, Mr Dabudabu said.

He said markets should be established at places that were easily accessible to the public and should be big so as to cater for a large number of vendors.

“Markets should be in areas that have transport and are central to a number of suburbs for them to be effective instead of being in secluded places like the Kelvin Market,” he said.

He said the recent establishment of vending bays by the council in a bid to curb illegal vending was not going to be enough for the large number of illegal vendors, some of whom were already operating from the places at which the council planned to establish bays.

Mr Dabudabu said there were about 1200 illegal vendors in Bulawayo in May this year a figure which could have doubled by now as more were forced into the informal sector by unemployment.