Source: Investors, Harare partner on new markets | Daily News
Harare City Council is inundated with applications by investors who want to partner in the construction of new markets.
Director of Housing and Community services Addmore Nhekairo said hundreds of applications have been received and the city was now processing them.
Currently, council has designs for the markets; they have been completed and what was left was to begin construction.
“After the mayor’s press statement in January, council was swamped with applications from investors willing to partner with the city in the provision of temporary and permanent vending structures at various market sites in Harare. We closed the receiving date of applications on February 19,” Nhekairo said.
He added that now council was trying to speedily and efficiently expedite the processing to ensure that vendors were urgently provided with the shelters.
The director of housing emphasised that the current structures which were deemed substandard were only temporary and would be removed once the final process started.
“The structures that councillors and residents are seeing are not the final product. We are awaiting finalisation of the Memorandum of Agreement with CBZ for the construction of the market infrastructure,” he said.
Chairperson of the informal sector committee Antony Shingadeya said the committee had tasked Nhekairo with looking for more avenues of revenue collection from the informal sector.
“The informal sector is a huge revenue base for the city which needs proper management for maximum utilisation. Nhekairo should find ways of ensuring that we collect enough revenue to provide them with structures that meet international standards,” he said.
Harare town clerk Hosiah Chisango said all district offices have now been empowered to issue out tables to willing informal traders who approach them for space.
“We heard the grievances of vendors who want markets and we will do right by what we said. There are some markets in the various suburbs that had been abandoned and we want traders to start taking up those spaces and pay directly to council and not space barons as they previously did while the new markets are being constructed,” Chisango said.
One month ago, councils across the country with the aid of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the army removed vendors that had built illegal tuckshops as a way of bringing order to the cities.
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