NDC mayoral candidate for Lusaka Saboi Imboela has promised to reintroduce street vending once elected to head the council.

In an audio statement yesterday, Imboela observed that street vending was permissible even in developed countries.

“We saw how our brothers and sisters were brutally chased from the streets without alternative places to trade from. And they were chased before schools opened so that really affected the education of their children because our brothers and sisters did not have income. Zambia is a country that does not have employment and these vendors are not telling government that give us grants, they are not telling anyone to give them money. All they want is spaces where they can trade and make money for themselves. There is no country in the whole world that does not have street vending. What needs to happen is that street vending has to be regulated. We can allocate certain days, roads and streets to street vending,” Imboela said.

“Street vending has to be regulated because we need our towns very clean but at the same time we need our people to earn an income. So as Saboi, and as NDC, we are saying that our brothers and sisters need alternative places to trade from and more than that, we need markets to trade from and one of the reasons why Zambia has so much street vending is that there are no markets. So let’s have a lot of markets in many of these places. And the good thing about creating markets is that the council will increase its income because it’ll be getting rentals and making money from the toilets in the markets.”

She said municipal councils were broke due to lack of assets.

“Right now councils are being declared broke, it is because they don’t have assets. The council does not have simple things like markets. So the council needs to build a lot of markets. If you go in Lusaka right now, the crime rate has gone up because a lot of people don’t have an income. For women that love to wear wigs, now there is a diva alert that when you are wearing a wig, make sure that you hold it when you are in town because people are now grabbing wigs form your head and they run away. We thought people had stopped stealing phones but now the stealing of phones has come back and all that is because the people do not have an income. As as Saboi, and as NDC, we are saying that our brothers and sisters, the vendors deserve to have an income and we need to have a lasting solution,” said Imboela.