Kwekwe vendors devise new tactics

VENDORS in Kwekwe have come up with new tactics, selling their wares from bags while others throng street pavements holding banners advertising their products as the local authority intensifies its blitz on vending.

Kwekwe City Council launched a blitz on street vendors and backyard food outlets last week, confiscating wares in an effort to fight the cholera and typhoid outbreak that has rocked some parts of the country killing over 30 people.

Kwekwe is yet to record a single case of typhoid and cholera and the city fathers are working towards moving the vendors out of the streets.

A snap survey by The Herald in Kwekwe’s central business district established that vendors had moved away from traditional way of spreading out their wares in the open for prospective customers to see but were now hiding their goods in shops and cars while they stand on pavements soliciting for clients using advertising banners. The same cases, as witnessed in the city’s heavily congested long distance bus terminus, food vendors play hide and seek with municipal police moving around soliciting for clients before collecting the food items from their hiding points.

Vendors interviewed said they have been losing their wares to the municipal police and were now using new methods to do business.

They said the local authority should create modern vending stalls and relocate them before they try to move them out of the streets.

“I have been eking out a living from the streets, selling my stuff here for years but the city council bosses just wake up and decided to chase me away from my source of income. It’s ridiculous, we will not be moved but continue to play the cat and mouse game with them.

“They should instead provide us with vending stalls than just trying to drive us away,” said one of the vendors, Mrs Gloria Madziva.