It will not be easy for administrators to do that, as the traders in question would wish to operate in areas where many people pass – which is precisely what commonly vexes urban authorities, that they make life impossible by filling all space available.
What the president emphasized, though, is that administrators should implement the reorganisation of the traders appropriately – without resorting to harassment.
So there are two areas of appropriate behaviour, which some fear that they are mutually exclusive – one being that of hawkers who claim near-permanent daytime ‘residence’ on urban streets and street pavements and not the marching ones.
Ensuring appropriate behaviour as relates to the issue on the part of district and regional officials has also proved hard to effect.
The reason is that administrators want to take effective measures which make the streets comfortable, but that demands kicking out all hawkers or retaining marginal numbers that don’t reflect the huge demand for trading space.
If such a measure is really forcibly effected and the traders truly leave the streets, we still can be sure that they will sooner or later reappear. This is the choice the relevant authorities ought to address.
Most complaints about the ‘havoc’ resulting from the operations of small traders invading urban streets are genuine. But then there also the relentless calls to armies of ‘jobless’ rural and urban young men and women to hunt for a decent income without doing enough to “clear the decks” for them in good time.
Many small traders based in sparsely populated areas outside major urban streets largely found too few customers for their comfort, so found themselves in some quagmire.
With the level of unemployment in the country and our inability to absorb as many youths as we would want into agriculture, some tolerance would come in handy as we see how best to help small traders in urban areas and elsewhere.
Only when district and regional administrators grasp that doing business where many people pass isn’t a choice but a necessity will they put to effect the president’s directive in a sufficiently imaginative manner.
One way is to follow what visiting Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto told our administrators in 2003 on the importance of having title deeds in making things work.
Indeed, batches of small traders need time to accumulate small amounts of capital in city centre areas – in turns. This would be courtesy of the relevant urban authorities.
Of course, this should not mean invading space reserved as bona fide shops, parking lots or pathways for pedestrians.
Issuing small traders with periodic trading permits or identity cards in prime areas could help the traders land loans payable within, say, six months.
It is our hope that the authorities will explore all these and more options, including Prof de Soto’s “dream” so that small traders are accommodated in a manner that will not prove more of a problem than a solution with respect to the plight of the traders.
We don’t have to seek to re-invent the wheel in this: there are successful “experiments” all around us to learn from. Meanwhile, let all concerned come to the rescue of small traders by fully heeding President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s directive.
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