CommuTalk Reporter
GWERU City Council will soon regularize the ‘illegal’ Mtapa market which operates opposite the Mtapa Police Station by making vendors there pay.
Speaking during the 689th ordinary council meeting, health and housing chairperson John Manyundwa said although the vendors had taken the law into their own hands, there was a need to regularize the operations so that the local authority realized revenue.
Manyundwa said the vendors had allocated themselves stalls despite council’s plea for them to move out as there were no toilets and water.
“It is high time we should get revenue from operations there. We are in the process of regulating them so that we get something there otherwise we might end up on the losing side,” he said.
Manyundwa also said the council had written a register for the vendors who they will offer stalls and then make them pay.
“The vendors are saying they can pay but they do not want to be displaced,” he added.
Vendors once highlighted that they had resorted to paying for mobile toilets so as to bring sanity to the vending market. Council had however maintained during a meeting hosted by VISET earlier this year that the vendors in question were being robbed by people who were eying profits from the looming sanitation disaster saying if vendors would arrange themselves and pay revenue to the council, the local authority would provide for their toilets.
Ward 14 Councilor Catherine Mhondiwa however said there was also a need for the council to create bays so as to create some resemblance of order.
In consensus, Mayor Josiah Makombe said that added to bays, the market needed to decongest through the creation of vending stalls in other residential areas.
Communicating discontent, Ward 15 Councilor Trust Chineni councilors remain unhappy with the way the vendors conducted themselves when they moved to Mtapa market as there was defiance and politicking.
