The Corriverton Municipality has issued a 48-hour removal notice to roadside vendors, and according to Mayor-elect Imran Amin, the vendors who do not comply will be moved.
While this is not the first time such a notice has been issued, the vendors are non-compliant.
The notice was issued to persons vending along the road shoulder adjacent to the play park in the vicinity of the municipal market, which remains vacant.
However, some vendors are contending that a 48-hour notice is very short as they have been in this area for more than a decade and have monthly obligations to financial institutions.
The by-law violation warning notice issued states that they are to remove their illegally erected structures and if they fail to comply, action will be taken against them.
A vendor, Mohandai Bisnauth, said she has nowhere else to ply her trade and has her children and a sick mother to care for in addition to a mortgage.
“Let them pay me for my structure or find a place and put me. I am not moving – I can’t thief and I can’t pick fair; I am too old, but my children have to eat,” she said while adding that if she applies to do domestic work, she will not be able to earn enough.
Sabita Singh, another vendor, said she depends on vending to earn her living and now she is concerned that no alternative place of vending has been proposed.
Another vendor, Lalita Sukhi, told this publication that she has been vending in the vicinity of the market for the past 21 years.
“I selling since we use to be over that side of the road and them come and move we from over there and put awe over here and now dem wan move we from here.”
She said that some 11 years ago, they were removed from the eastern side of the road to the western side.
Neil Williams, who has been occupying the structures to vend, said he has been doing so for the past two years. He said that a corporal attached to the constabulary department was the one who served the notices to the vendors, who were then occupying the eastern side of the road, instructing them to remove their structures and erect them on the opposite side of the road.
Mayor-elect Imran Amin in an invited comment told this publication that the notices were served on persons, who are vending in the vicinity of the newly construed park. He said persons have now started vending at the park illegally with full knowledge that it is a no-vending zone.
“You are having alcohol consumption there which it totally prohibited. You have persons going there consuming narcotics as well.”
He pointed out that the vendors who were issued with notices on Wednesday were served with notices of a similar nature several times before.
“No one did adhere to those notices and they still continue doing their business. At some point in time, they will have to move from there. It is a zone in which they are not supposed to be vending.”
Amin said the vendors were given notices a decade ago to vacate the area, not to go to the other side of the road and vend.
“Those, who were on the eastern side were not given the option to come on the western side. They were served notices for everybody to remove from there. The market has vacant stalls.”
He said those vendors can apply for stalls in the market and their applications will be fast-tracked so that they continue earning a living with little interruptions in their regular routine.
Asked if the municipality will allow the vendors to treat the most recent notice as they did in the past or will be the Council be taking action this time, Amin said the Council will keep serving notices to the vendors.
“We will take the rightful course. The Council will not use the iron fist and go and break down people’s stalls. If it comes to a point where by the Council has to engage them because of not adhering to the notices, we will have to use the courts and let the court deal with it, but the Council is not going to break anybody’s stalls or bulldoze anybody forcefully,” Amin reiterated.
