The Livingstone City Council (LCC) is under pressure from street vendors who want to return to the streets after they were removed to pave way for the hosting of the United Nations Tourism Organsation (UNWTO).
The vendors allege that their relocation from Mosi-Oa-Tunya Road to the second class trading district was meant to pave way for cleaning of the city prior to co-hosting the UNWTO with Zimbabwe in August this year.
The vendors also allege that they needed to go back to the street since they did not benefit from the hosting of the UNWTO general assembly.
Some street vendors talked to said job opportunities were still at large and trading from the street was their source of livelihood.
One of the vendors Mwangelwa Muyambango said the council must allow vendors to go back t the man street in Livingstone because their counterparts across Zambia went about their businesses with interference from the local authorities.
He said the government had allowed people to trade on the street and t was unfair for the LCC to continue harassing people that were making efforts to fend for their families under the current difficult economic terrain.
“We considered our shifting to the other place was a temporal measure but now the council wants us to remain there permanently. We shall not accept this because there is no business on the other side. We want to go back to the man street, which is busy and it is easier for people to sell their goods,” said Muyambango.
Muyambango said it was not fair for street vendors in Livingstone to be treated differently from other vendors in other cities and towns.
He said President Sata made a decree to allow unemployed people to engage in street vending freely until such a time when the government shall be able to offer them jobs.
Muyambango said chasing street vendors from their spots along Mosi-Oa-Tunya road was tantamount to punishing them.
‘The council claims that we have other markets such as Mbita, Dambwa and Libuyu but business is slow there and usually markets spaces are not available,” he said.
But LCC public relations manager Emmanuel Sikanyika said the council would take punitive action against anyone found selling merchandise on the streets in the tourist capital.
He said from Livingstone that vendors must not take advantage of the successful hosting of the UNWTO general assembly to go back to the streets.
He said only newspaper and mobile phone talk-time vendors were allowed to conduct their business on the streets.
“These people must be patient because the construction of the a modern market is being finalised at the end of this month and structure will accommodate all of them,” he said.
Sikanyika said t would be reversing the gains scored by the council in terms of cleaning the city and maintaining order f the vendors returned to the streets.
He said that street vendors must not take the law into their hands because law enforcement agencies were monitoring their activities they would pounce on anyone breaking the law.
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