Bulawayo vendors continue business as usual amid Council relocation plans

It’s business as usual on Monday in Bulawayo’s city centre as vendors go about their business while the council is adapting to prioritise the relocation of vendors first before implementing enforcement measures.

Last week, the Government, through the Minister of Local Government and Public Works, Daniel Garwe, issued a 48-hour ultimatum to address the growing incidence of night vending. The argument has been that the surge in unregulated informal trading in the CBD has resulted in increased pedestrian traffic, widespread littering, and disturbances to established businesses within the CBD, making the cities unattractive to investors.

However, the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has decided to take a less aggressive approach to the vending saga, allowing the 48-hour Government ultimatum to lapse incident-free. Deputy Mayor Edwin Ndlovu said on Saturday that they were in the final stages of relocating vendors from 5th Avenue and other areas in town to designated alternative spaces.

“This process will ensure a smoother transition to compliant trading practices. We had already set in motion the process of relocating vendors to designated areas such as Bakta’s and Egodini when the Government issued the ultimatum. All registered vendors will be moved to the council-constructed available bays, and this relocation process is nearing completion,” said Councillor Ndlovu.

Regarding enforcement, he noted that the council was going to collaborate with the Zimbabwe Republic Police to ensure measures were effectively put into place once the relocation had been finalised.

“Our enforcement efforts will be around the clock, but we will rely on the police since our municipal officers lack the authority to make arrests,” he said.

According to statistics, the BCC has a total of 3,416 vending bays in the Central Business District, of which 3,279 are occupied, and only 244 of those have the necessary licences to operate legally. The highest concentration of unlicensed vendors can be found at various sites throughout the city, with significant discrepancies in site allocations and licences.

The figures provided by the local authority indicate that the city has 16 vending sites in the CBD. The site between Lobengula Street and Herbert Chitepo and 6th Avenue up to 8th Avenue has the highest number of bays (814) that are occupied, where just 12 are licensed. The Highlanders site has 749 bays, with 720 having been allocated and 184 bays being licensed.

At Baktas (2nd Avenue and Lobengula Street), all 175 bays, despite being allocated, are unlicensed by the local authority. The same applies to the site located at the corner of 6th Avenue and Lobengula Street, where out of the 337 bays available and allocated, none of them are legally licensed to operate by the local authority.

At Hyper, all the 30 vendors allocated are also not legally licensed to operate. At 6th Avenue Extension, only three vendors out of the 118 that were allocated are licensed to operate at the site, while at the site along Lobengula Street between 5th and 6th Avenue, only three out of the 121 allocated bays are licensed to operate.

The Flower Trading Site, which is located adjacent to the Large City Hall, has 37 allocated bays, of which just eight are licensed to operate. Meanwhile, the Fruits and Vegetables site, located at the corner of Robert Mugabe Way and 8th Avenue, has 96 bays available, with 52 having been allocated, and of those, just one bay is licensed to operate.-chroncile