Informal traders should enjoy constitutional rights

SINCE inception, the Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation (Viset) has endeavoured to ensure that informal traders have an understanding of what the law says about the economy.

This entails an understanding of their constitutional rights and by-laws.

Over the past two weeks, Viset has been conducting campaigns on socioeconomic rights, exploring how these can be used to strategically locate informal traders in the growth and development of the national economy.

Socio-economic rights affect the welfare of citizens. They include the right to work, right to housing, right to water and sanitation, among others.

What is important to note is that, every citizen has got the right to freely choose a means for a living and has got the right to an opportunity to work and working in a favourable environment.

Rights are universal so the State has a role to protect people’s rights, it has to promote them and is also duty-bound to fulfil them.

It was, however, indeed unfortunate that a lot of people, especially informal traders, were not aware of their rights.

There are institutions created under the Constitution such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, whose mandate it is to promote awareness of these rights.

But due to lack of funding, not much has been done in terms of enlightening the citizenry on their rights.

The markets that were constructed by local authorities are not profitable, hence a lot of informal traders decide not to occupy these spaces.

Siting of markets is important and requires consultation with informal trader bodies.

On if law enforcement officers understand the constitutional rights of traders, Viset feels that this is an area of concern due to the brutality, unwarranted, sometimes arbitrary arrests that are perpetrated against traders which would have been avoidable if law enforcement agency were aware of people’s socio-economic rights.

These transgressions are mostly perpetrated because law enforcement agents are ignorant of the law they purport to uphold.