Harare City Council has distanced itself from the ongoing demolition of unregistered businesses in Mbare, Chitungwiza and other areas.
Harare mayor Herbert Gomba urged vendors to register with the council for them to get trading sites. While addressing a press conference in Harare on Wednesday, Mayor Gomba said:
All members of the informal sector who have been trading at undesignated points and were removed from the illegal sites are advised to visit their nearest district offices for space allocations. Taking up space at approved trading sites will eliminate the demolition of illegal structures and loss of investments.
We want people to be relocated to the designated trading sites without force. We don’t subscribe to this notion of demolition before allocation of an alternative place. So we want to deal with this issue.
To complement our efforts, we are inviting stakeholders with the capacity to construct temporary and permanent vending infrastructure at designated sites to approach the council for space allocation.
The demolitions were launched in Chitungwiza where small scale traders were instructed to destroy their structures under the watchful eye of truckloads of soldiers. ‘C’ Junction and Makoni Shopping Center were the most affected.