“Where there are people there is money. The more people there are, the more money there is,” a vendor at the complex said. “We just look for the places where people congregate. We don’t care what they are doing.”
Informal traders at the passport offices sell a variety of wares including black pens to fill in passport forms, cigarettes, sweets and sadza.
City of Harare spokesman, Lesley Gwindi, told The Zimbabwean the council was trying its best to deal with the issue.
“Our police officers arrest these people but as soon as they are released, they go back,” Gwindi said.
He acknowledged that the vendors’ activities posed a health hazard to residents as there were no sanitary facilities at the complex.
The vendors said they had little choice but to find ways to make a living and take care of their families.
“What else can we do? You can’t just sit at home and do nothing. As for the city council we just deal with it as it comes,” one said.
“This is Harare. Everybody is trying to make a fortune and we all have our individual ways of doing that,” said another informal trader.
The hundreds of people at Makombe Building are trying to apply for various national documents such as birth certificates, national identity documents and travelling documents. Corruption is rife, with middlemen who work for corrupt public officials offering to those who process documents expediently once a bribe has been paid.
The city council insists that vending should be done only in designated areas but the vendors prefer to go where the people are.
With official figures scarce, unemployment in the country is estimated to be over 80 percent. Vendors accuse the city council of harassing them when there are no alternatives.
“It is not as if we are stealing from anybody,” a vendor at the passport office said.
The city authorities have been reported in the local media as saying they want to limit and regulate the number of vendors operating in the city. The sheer number of informal traders operating, however, means this will be very difficult to achieve for a council that is already struggling to provide basic services to its residents.
Post published in: News