TOP Bulawayo City Council officials are expected to hold a crunch stakeholders’ meeting with vendors in the city today to discuss the emotive issue of informal trading and move them to designated sites.
BY NQOBILE BHEBHE
This came days before the June 26 deadline imposed by the government for all vendors in the country’s central business districts to move back to sites identified by various local authorities.
According to a notice published yesterday, Bulawayo mayor Martin Moyo was scheduled to address the meeting.
The council ordered vendors to immediately vacate “illegal trading points” or face arrest and prosecution for violating the city’s by-laws.
Bulawayo streets, like others across the country, are crowded with vendors who have vowed to stay put at trading places despite several threats by the local authority to remove them and decongest pavements.
Early this month, the council said all vendors trading at undesignated sites in contravention of council by-laws should stop their activities forthwith.
Councillors recently noted that the issue of vendors had been politicised, with the opposition MDC-T threatening to rally behind the vendors and resist their forced relocation.
