Minister Gary Nkombo Has Accused the Previous Patriotic Front of Escalating the Issue of Street Vending.

In a recent Ministry Statement made in parliament, Gary Nkombo Minister of Local Government and Rural Development blamed the previous Patriotic Front (PF) administration for worsening street vending in Lusaka’s Central Business District (CBD) during its time in office.

Nkombo declared that the PF had distributed a portion of land in the CBD for clutter containers to be erected by vendors. He also stated that the PF had received money from various street vendors in exchange for allocating illegal trading areas to the merchants.

These choices taken by the PF were noted to be incongruent with Zambian law outlined in the 2007 Market and Bus Station Act, which categorises street vending as an illegal activity.

Last week, the Permanent Secretary for Technical Services in the Ministry of Local Government, Nicholas Phiri, affirmed that the Ministry and its stakeholders had agreed upon the need to sanitise Lusaka’s CBD through the removal of street vendors.

Nkombo defended the government’s move to stop a further increase of “tuntembas” in the city and added that “The problem of street vending was worsened by our colleagues in the previous government”, and the PF’s actions has ultimately “resulted in unsustainable levels of waste generation with no sanitary facilities to accommodate the increasing number of vendors”.

The decision to stop street vending in the CBD has received significant backlash, with Nkombo saying that he is “now viewed as a bad man” because of his attempts to correct the “corruption” of the previous government.

Nkombo has admitted that street vending is “a complicated subject because it’s sitting at a cultural shift”, yet he firmly believes that the removal of street vendors in the CBD will benefit Lusaka both hygienically and aesthetically.

Nkombo said that stopping street vending will not reduce the available areas for merchants, he explained that a recent study found that there were “4,992 unoccupied trading spaces [available for the] 4,415 street vendors”, demonstrating that there is a “sufficient [number of] trading spaces to accommodate [for] those trading from the streets”.

Additionally, the minister confirmed the removal of street vendors will be done systematically, assuring that no force will be applied.

In his statement, Nkombo said that “The street vendors have been urged to go back to the markets that have empty spaces. I am sure members can bear witness to the beauty of Lusaka that the removal of street vendors has exposed. Not the beauty but the sanity that has been restored” he concluded.