KCCA warns vendors off streets and roadsides

Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) vendors off streets and roadsides

KCCA says even after many strategies have been put in place including setting up market centres, vendors have persistently continued to operate from the streets and roadsides.

They parade in front of car windows calling on customers to buy from them. At particular market centres like Kalerwe, the case is relatively the same, these vendors on a daily display their merchandise on the roadsides.

However, information from Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), an organization in charge of the city indicates that they working to carry out enforcement across several areas including different market centres to ensure they evict the illegally operating vendors from roadsides.

‘’We are working on a plan to remove them, of recent we have arrested and taken them to court for prosecution and also confiscated some of their property,’’ the KCCA, Head of Public and Corporate Affairs, Peter Kaujju implied in an interview.

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Mr Kaujju, who remains unclear why the vendors have persistently refused to leave the streets said that they (vendors) are too desperate for quick sales and thus they desire to operate using wrong methods.

‘’If they run to your car and you can buy then they feel it is easier because they do not have to pay anybody any fee,’’ he says, adding that they cannot also blame the taxes because they are very low as compared to those of private facilities.

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‘’When you compare our taxes to private facilities around, ours is very cheap because it is there to provide a service and not to make money, the vendors pay one monthly fee depending on what one does, with the lowest price being UGX 40,000/ up to 480,000/ for the bigger shops,’’

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Besides, he insisted that KCCA is expanding workspaces in the city through ensuring the completion of markets centres in Busega, Kasubi and Kitintale to add to the already opened ones like Wandegeya as well as gazetting roads on specific days to allow the vendors the chance to make more profits from their businesses.

Also, the organization is looking forward to ensuring that all those interested in operating the vending business in the city acquire operating permits to easily identify them from those working illegally.

Kaujju however, advised vendors to comply and work from regulated and gazetted centres to save them from the burden of having their merchandise confiscated and other problems like accidents which might claim their lives.

By John Dalton Kigozi