Friday, March 29, 2024

Lusaka City Council thinking of allocating 3 streets in the city to vendors

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Street vendors in Lusaka

The Lusaka City Council (LCC) is pondering allocating some streets in the city where street vendors will be allowed to conduct their business.

LCC Public Relations Manager Chanda Makanta said the local authority was working on measures to organise street vendors instead of chasing them without giving them alternative places to sell their merchandise from.

The City Council has in the past attempted to curb street vending in the city but this proved futile as vendors returned to the streets alleging that they had nowhere to conduct business from.

In an interview with ZANIS in Lusaka yesterday, Mrs. Makanta said the local authority was aware of high unemployment levels among citizens hence the decision to allocate certain streets such as Katondo, Nkwazi and Chiparamba to vendors.

She explained that this was in order to prevent street vendors from trading anywhere else in the city.

The Council Public Relations Manager said the local authority has had meetings with shop owners in the named streets most of whom were agreeable to the idea except for few who were still engaged in dialogue with LCC.

Mrs. Makanta said according to the laws of Zambia, street vending was illegal but the Council was planning to make it more organised so that traders were compelled to making the streets clean as opposed to the current scenario.

She appealed to shop owners, who were still hesitant, to consider the Council’s proposal so that street vendors could be directed where to conduct their business.

38 COMMENTS

  1. He he he he he he ..this is how they should have done in the first place. You build systems to meet people’s needs and requirements. You don’t build systems and try to fit people into them. That is why the say blindly importing things from somewhere and forcing them down on people is just dumb and LCC and people who have been to school should have know better.

    All the major cities fo the world that don’t have street vendors archieved that not by creating a bloated coucils police to chase people. They provided people with alternatives. Vendors are there for a reason and we need to listen to them as people and design a City that takes their needs into consideration

    Full Time results  Vendors 2: 0 LCC
    Power to the people 

  2. This is what happens when you politicise everything, the councils under the PF were functioning properly come the MMD id i o ts, they hijack the operations and this the end result. instead of coming up with strategic and long term plan for the vendors, they want to increase the capacity of vendors on the streets soon the whole town will look like Lagos or Pershawa in Parkistan or even New Dehli in India Koma nimasebela aya sure! When sata was Local government minister in 1992 he brought sanity to the streets of Luaska he addressed the issue of street vendors by constructing a modern market at soweto but today these guys are saying that they don’t have any altenative for street vendors; what has happened to strategic thinking? yendani!!! William banda’s reasoning sure!

  3. This is madness. Think beyond that ba Council. Its mere cheap politicking you are thinking loudily about. Create more business districts within the City then you will have no problem. The only business district for low and middle income is only along those roads. What happens when the owners of the shops relocate elsewhere because of insecurity and uncontrollable congestion? Do not forget street venders get their merchandise from the same traders! Epo mpelele!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. Zambia is just a couple hundred years from the days when survival depended entirely on the elements. The do or die (survival of the fittest) mentality stems from this. Fair play is not a virtue that has been with us for 5000 years. So democracy and democratic practice will take time to evolve here. True if we are lucky and we have a few more Mandela’s spread around the place we’d catapult the Democracy agenda, but i think the realistic thing is to try and win in small ways, insist on fairness when the guns are not pointed at our heads (death in these things must never be unavoidable, Wezi Kaunda, That finance Minister they killed, Mungomba, etc) and keep voting, keep voting and keep voting. Vote new ideas and vote PF, we cant be any worse off can we? Thanks

  5. Elections in Zambia are just a test but does not include changing the government by vote they use elections to fool the people and western countries that the country is running on democratic lines.
    Pardon me and my hubby if I am wrong but if the president is lucky he gets the majority and he will continue and if he fails to get majority he will use all means to remain in power, not saying that is what happened in Zambia, but that is the cultural expectations in most African states right? Have you people done anything to make sure this doesn’t not happen. Our MP here Ian Davison is a modern genius who we look up to in our local area and is as transparent as my see-through top. Thanks

  6. This is pure m.adness by the council. Give these guys three streets and they will demand for more until the whole KaLusaka will be garbage and nothing to talk about. This is pure PF ma.dness. Nivozifunila chabe. Very soon the council will have nothing to control. This is how things start.

  7. Wake up you people this is MMD underhand to gain votes from street vendors. The MMD wants to please people by allowing them to sell on the streets. Is it today that you have now realised that there was unemployment?

    • Cheap politics by MMD , they discredit Sata when he tells them about lasting solutions. Now they want to win Votes from vendors. Shame

  8. This is a very good idea. Thumbs up to LCC. This is progress. I agree with this idea.

  9. What do you expect from a president of Rupia Banda’s caliber? very soon we shall start to see Nkhumba and Mbuszi being slaughtered in freedom way and cairo road Sata must come quickly and rescue the country from these D O G S. Indeed the country has gone to the D O G S and the D O G S have also come in. It’s really sad.

  10. Hahahaha… Mushota! You are adorable, whatever you are trying to say.
    Anyway, this LCC thought lacks rigor. We cnt de-civilise more streets in the pretext of organising ‘trade’! Maybe our city council must be comparing notes with other councils in other countries who have effectively addressed similar vendor-conundrums. We are running out of ideas, & its not funny anymore.:d

  11. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,please thats why the New Soweto market was built these kaponyas have stands at Soweto market and the same people sell on the streets.Please MMD do no allow this Kaponya madness to rule the city.

  12. What foolish thinking by the council! This is why Lusaka will forever remain
    a garbage city instead of a garden city. Create some available land nearby for
    trading instead of allocating 3 streets for street trading. We urge the traders who will
    be affected by this foolish decision to refuse to pay tax. If we had planners
    who are able to think, they could have planned to demolish the buildings where these
    street vendors are and build a multi story shopping complex to enable existing traders and
    those who are trading on the streets to trade there.

  13. This is what happens when you dont create jobs for the people. Some of those people in the street markets have great academic qualifications

  14. # 17 Maiko Zulu

    I totally agree with you. This is a symptom of lack of job creation issue in by the MMD govt. All these kids without jobs need to eat and live and the only way out is street vending. Create credible jobs and you will not have to worry so much about this street vending. 

    As a matter of fact the 3 streets you are talking about are not enough to cater for all street vendors in Lusaka. Those streets will be full in a month and what are you going to do next? Give the whole Cairo road to street vendors?

    Lets address the root problem. Job creation

  15. Knowing how authorities operate in zambia a decision has already been made and cannot be changed despite all the talk against unless for political free kicks!
    What we should be talking about are facilities put in place for garbage collection, toilets, alcohol restriction etc.

  16. I wonder if anyone is ever imagining the impending traffic jam in the City. North and South bound truckers will need to pass through which roads ? Is Cairo Road capable of handling all traffic currently using the three roads? Lets wait and see.

  17. Finally Osama Bin Laden has been killed by American forces wow . justice has been done after ten years of terror attacks

    • 21 MWIPONTA MUKABWELA,we are not talking about OSAMA BIN LADEN here.we are talking about street vending in our own capital city.pliz talk about the issue at hand.

  18. Street vending should not be condoned at all cost.
    it’l bring chaos in the city.
    what is LCC trying to prove?

  19. 21 MWIPONTA MUKABWELA,We are not talking about OSAMA BIN LADEN here.
    We talking about STREET VENDING in our own CAPITAL CITY.
    Please we need yo input on the issue at hand.

  20. Unlike some who say this is a sign of lack of job creation by the gov’t lets remember the gov’t is there to provide an enabling environment for you to do your best and it is not there to provide jobs.Then 95% of work to make a good living is on you.At the most it is these folks to blame for their standard of life.Other than that it wrong to allow street vending in the city as garbage will be the order of the day.

  21. The idea is progressive.Its no use having a law on your statute books which is impossible to enforce. It is also a potential source of revenue for the local autority. Its dangerous to see everything progressive Govt does as a campaign gymic. Whatever the case regulation of street vending can only be done in a manner that both recognises the vendors interest and the interest of maintaining law and order.

  22. Our research students believe that this plan is doomed to fail and turn the once beautiful city into a an epidemic disease ridden city with no control of garbage collection. It may cause more accidents from drivers too. The city council has run out of ideas. The council should seek advise from our schools of business, humanities and social sciences to get some help on how to resolve the problem.

  23. Yaba! Chibolya ll extend to chacha road now and call boys will not need to travel the ghetto to get dobo, and lawlessness will escalate. And with us trading in shops around town is the city council going to scrap the trading license? And taxes for ZRA? how re we going to manage our business well when we ll be competing with vendors?

  24. We cannot remain with this under development for ever when some people like Kavindele are the only ones benefiting. Banda promised to just Mwanawasa’s 3 year term, and voting him out will just fulfil the promise. This time we are burrying our differences and going for development under HH. What matters to us now is development and not allowing the same experienced political experts to manipulate us for their benefits, as Zambia is bigger than them. HH is our man.

  25. Sometimmes you have to be cruel to be good. The local authority should just do the right thing. You give these people an inch they will go many many miles.

  26. What a shame on Lcc and the RB govt.Why can’t you build quality and modern markets like in other countries e.g south africa unlike give out three streets to vendors.Look how beautiful mandela square is in s/africa and other countries as compared to our bad roads,bad buildings,mountains of garbage all over the country,bad planning by the LCC and the govt.In zambia,we’ve nothing to show bicoz of bad planning.In short,don’t give the three streets to the vendors bicoz the whole town will have mountains of garbage and the LCC will fail to collect.

  27. Total madness! Imagine you have a shop on the said streets. That puts you out of business and worse still prone to attacks from these same vendors. How do you handle sanitation?

  28. All that nonsense makes the government of the day sound even more crazier than ever.street vendors are only found in places where they think that business is good.how then do you expect them to adapt to having their own streets when they know exactly where the can do business without waiting for customers to come and visit their streets

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