The police and law enforcement officers of Kampala Capital City Authority will from Monday morning carry out an operation to evict illegal vendors off the city streets. code named restore order.
The operation codenamed “Restore Order” is to rid about 40 streets within the central business district of illegal street vendors.
KCCA Executive Director Jennifer Musisi gave the vendors a four day ultimatum which ends on Sunday to vacate the street and restore order in the city.
Kampala metropolitan police spokesperson, Ibin Ssenkumbi calls on all vendors and hawkers who have their properties on the streets and road sides, to take them away starting tomorrow evening.
//Cue in: We have together…”
Cue out:…without affecting anybody.”//
The police are also meeting the leaders of the forty streets on Saturday afternoon to forge a peaceful way forward.
Early this morning four members of parliament including Kawempe North MP Latif Sebagala and Kampala Woman MP Nabilah Ssempala stormed KCCA offices to meet Musisi over the vendors’ eviction.
However, they did not find her and were instead addressed by the Deputy Director for Physical planning, George Agaba.
The MPs said they were backing the vendors not to be evicted until government finds alternative spaces in the different markets that the vendors are to be relocated to.
However, Agaba said KCCA will go ahead and implement the government plan to ensure order is restored in the city. Musisi early this week said the Authority had identified over 8,000 spaces in 69 public and private city markets where the vendors can sell their merchandise.
According to city authorities, at least 8,500 street vendors are estimated to be operating in the city’s central business district. Most of them operate on pavements, road reserves and outside shopping centres.
She said that the planned eviction of vendors was part of a wider plan to ensure trade order in the city, in accordance with the Trade Order Ordinance, 2006.
Among the affected streets include Market, Dastur, Luwum, Wilson and Kiyembe Lane as well as part of Ben-Kiwanuka. Other areas include; Allen road, Swaminarayan road, the downtown Kikuubo shopping hub and taxi parks.
On Friday, Lord Mayor Elias Lukwago in a statement said he was against the vendors’ eviction, since the authority had not sat and talked to them as was the plan. The Mayor plans to meet the vendors on Monday morning to forge a way forward.
