As to hawkers creeping back, let’s skip bribes for a moment

Some reports say that they trade a bit during the day and more freely at night, but everyone knows that trading at night is nearly unfeasible as most people are tired at that time, alighting from buses to walk home, not to seek out items from a nearby pile. One has to have decided to actually follow a hawker, in the knowledge of being available at that time, while hawking has to do with chancy attraction.

A municipal official told this newspaper that hawkers find their way back because a security company tasked to keep guard, SUMA JKT, has staff accepting coins from hawkers to let them do their business, an accusation that a media official for National Service Headquarters flatly rejected. The city official economised his assertions as he ought to have owned up that city militia have a habit of hitting hawkers and seize their goods, while JKT personnel work more professionally, in observing limits of what is allowed and what is not. Actually the work they do is consonant with ‘rearranging’ hawkers, as policy.

Municipal officials don’t appear to appreciate that President Samia Suluhu Hassan appealed to regional administration to reorganize the hawkers, improve the way they conduct their business, which means alleviating the space infringement prevalent earlier. Most of that has been cleared but extremes are also being observed, where municipal authorities figure out that hawkers are an aspect of dirt in the city, especially the rudimentary constructs they put up. And surprisingly, in what an adage says ‘the spear is best for the pig,’ they are absolutely persuaded the skimpy far off areas they ‘designate’ are feasible.

Rearranging hawkers means at least allowing reasonable concentrations of petty traders in markets that usually stand next to major bus stops, as people will know where to go for their cheap clothing without being inordinately inconvenienced. In that case hawkers can still survive with restrictions as to lining up major roads and instead throng restricted market spaces, clustering hawkers as it were, while respecting directives on leaving waste water infrastructure free, etc. That they throw things into troughs – often the deciding feature municipal officials cite – is a non-issue, as collecting such dirt is minor periodic work.

What lacks in city authorities thrust of will is that there is no visible sympathy that hawkers be able to make ends meet, and that is what riles sections of the public, such that in some instances guards seeking to clear some lady food vendors were pelted with stones in the neighbourhood of ITV bus stop, where the eating spot serves scores of factory workers nearby, etc. The Dar city population has generally been supportive of easing the streets of numerous hawking installations - but isn’t agreed that they disappear.