Unregistered street vendors asked to move

Several illegal vendors trading in the central business district, including those who have defaulted paying rent to the municipality, are facing eviction.THE Windhoek municipality has requested unregistered arts and crafts vendors operating from Independence Avenue in Windhoek to move, as they are not allowed to sell at the site where they are now.

The spokesperson of the municipality, Lydia Amutenya, yesterday said speculation that all the vendors operating between the Hilton Hotel and the new First National Bank (FNB) head office will be removed from the premises were false, and that only those not meant to sell there have been requested to move.

“From time to time, we find traders not registered with the City of Windhoek operating at the site. This is usually the group of traders that we request to move,” she explained.

Amutenya said in addition to the unregistered vendors being asked to move, vendors who failed to pay their rental fees to the municipality have also been requested to move.

“There are also other traders who have defaulted on their rental payments, and whose contracts were cancelled as a result,” she added. Asked whether the vendors located at the parking lot would be there permanently, Amutenya said provision for a new location was made for them. “Provision has been made for the registered traders to be accommodated at the open space in front of the FNB building, where concrete furniture (tables and benches) have been provided for them,” she noted.

However, due to a lack of space at that location, the move has been delayed.

Jackline Kasume, one of the vendors at the site who has been selling items for over 20 years, said when they were moved to the parking lot in 2014, they did not expect to be located at that site for so long.

“They [municipality] said we were only going to be here for three month, and thereafter we would be put in a shop. They also had the audacity of showing us the little shops under the bank’s building and telling us that they would be ours. But they gave them to the people with bigger businesses, who can pay higher rent. Those were supposed to be our shops, according to them,” she said.

Kasume claimed that when they were moved to the parking lot, the municipality told them that they would not need to pay a fee during their stay, which has not been the case.

She added that the vendors are each expected to pay N$150 per month to continue selling at the site. Kasume said although the fee they are required to pay does not seem much, it is a lot, considering the environment they work in.

“Every now and then, we breathe in fumes from the exhausts of cars, and sometimes when the cars reverse, they drive into our items and break them,” she lamented.

Echoing Kasume’s sentiments, another vendor at the site, Mariana Sheehama, said the location they were moved to comes with a lot of inconveniences.

“This is not a nice place. We do not have water or toilets, but we have to pay rent,” she sressed.

She also complained about the potholes in the road that make transporting their items to and from their storage containers difficult.

“We have to carry our items in boxes on trolleys from the containers, and because of all the potholes, sometimes our boxes fall and our items break. Other times, the wheels on the trolleys break off,” she continued.

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