Cities savour clean streets, while vendors complain

Calm has returned to Malawi's cities after a week marked with clashes between protesting street vendors and the police. Last week, there were at least two days of raging battles between the police and street vendors, resisting their removal from the centre of Malawi's three cities to permanent flea markets in the outskirts. Scores of informal traders were arrested and police had to fire teargas to disperse the demonstrators in the capital, Lilongwe and the commercial hub of Blantyre. The vendors in the two cities and the northern town of Mzuzu had been given until 15 April to relocate to the new trading venues. Police continues to patrol the now clean streets, while government officials and city residents are pleased with the transformation. "We want our cities and towns to look clean. I am happy that the vendors have moved to designated flea markets", said George Chaponda, local government and rural development minister. "Government should be praised for this. Our cities are now clean. The [municipal] workers are cleaning the streets every day and this is a welcome development", remarked a Lilongwe resident, who asked not to be named. The removal of the vendors will also make the streets a lot safer, commented other residents. But the vendors, who had resisted the move, maintained that the flea markets were too small to accommodate all of them and are located away from the city centres, where most of their customers are. "The problem with government is that it is looking on one side of the coin. They are not concerned about our economic survival. Most of us have had our businesses go down because our products are not being sold", said Emmanuel Yobe, an informal trader in Lilongwe. Yobe said it would take time for the vendors to settle down and for their customers to find them in their new venue. He said most of them were not earning enough "because our customers now go into Asian shops and buy whatever they want. They cannot come to the flea market because they are not used to it and it is far". Others like Edith Pheri, a second-hand clothes vendor complained that her daily income had reduced considerably, from US $34 a day to $12. City officials have confirmed that the flea markets did not have sufficient trading spots for the thousands of displaced vendors. The flea market in Lilongwe can only accomodate 400 out of a more than a thousand vendors. But Chaponda reiterated government’s commitment to build more flea markets for the informal traders. Across the country more than 30,000 street vendors have been affected by the evacuation drive - last week's protest action against relocation was the second this year. The policy to remove the informal traders from urban centres is a departure from the one adopted by President Bingu wa Mutharika's predecessor Bakili Muluzi. Street vendors were supported during Muluzi's tenure because they were seen as a popular vote bank. The former president often invited vendors to his official residence, Sanjika in Blantyre, when he jokingly called himself the "Minister of the Vendors".