By the time IPS spoke to her, the pressures of mounting a round-the-clock protest outside the United Nations offices in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, were beginning to tell.
Leah Njoki’s face was bathed in perspiration as she made her way, limping, in front of the UN premises last week. Sleeping outdoors had also brought on an attack of flu.
Njoki was one of about 300 disabled hawkers who had been demonstrating at the offices for several days, in the hope of forcing the UN to intervene in a local government decision to bar informal traders from doing business in the city centre.
Some had also had their wheelchairs confiscated. ”First we want the Nairobi City Council to return our wheelchairs. Secondly, we want to be allowed to trade within the city centre,” said Njoki, who sells sweets.
”I am a single mother of four school-going children. I depend on this work to pay my rent, school fees for the children, food and other needs. If the city council evicts us from the city, then they want me and my children to die,” she added.
In 2003, authorities instituted a policy of moving the thousands of vendors who work in Nairobi to quieter roads in the central business district, in a bid to reduce congestion in this area. However, efforts are now under way to relocate the traders even further away: at the beginning of this month, the council began evicting hawkers from the city centre — demanding that they move to the outskirts of Nairobi.
”Street vending has been largely perceived as a major contributor to congestion in urban centres. Further, (hawkers) have been blamed for the rising levels of garbage within towns,” says a report by the Nairobi Central Business District Association (NCBDA) entitled Street Vending in Nairobi: A Socio-Economic Survey in the Central Business District-Nairobi. The NCBDA is a non-governmental grouping that works to improve cleanliness and security in the capital.
While a court decision issued on Thursday upheld the reversal of policy by local government, a group representing hawkers — the Nairobi Informal Traders Consultative Forum (Nitcof) — is demanding that they be allowed to resume operations in the city.
”Every hawker paid $1,7 in 2003 and was given a permit to operate from 23 back lanes. The permit has no expiry date and we see no reason why the same government that issued the permits now wants to dishonour them,” said Nitcof Chairman Benson Mbui Ng’ang’a.
The hawkers also claim there is no guarantee that they will be able to set up shop on the land allocated to them at the edge of Nairobi. Three schools in the area are claiming it as a playground, while a politician reportedly intends to construct a parking lot there.
Then there is the matter of sanitation.
”There is no water, and only one mobile toilet to serve the growing number of hawkers currently operating in the central business district and the back lanes,” says Ng’ang’a, who also sells second hand shoes.
Hawkers are demanding that government build permanent markets for them within Nairobi, saying outlying areas — and even some of the back lanes in the city centre — do not attract enough people who can serve as customers for informal traders.
While it has its finger on the pulse of negative perceptions about hawkers, the NCBDA also advocates that government adopt a more accommodating stance towards informal traders.
”The NCBDA recently sponsored Nairobi City Council representatives and some members of parliament to go to South Africa to see the hawking situation there, and they were impressed,” said an official from the association. ”They actually did not believe that hawking could be done in an organised manner in the middle of key streets.”
But, ”It is happening in other cities like Johannesburg and with clear policies, it can also happen here,” the official added.
The adoption of ”clear policies” to regulate hawkers would require the legalization of informal trading, however. This has yet to take place, even though various sources estimate that the informal sector — of which street vending forms an important part — accounts for almost 20% of Kenya’s gross domestic product.
Efforts to legalise informal trading were underway as long ago as 2001, when hawkers formed part of a committee to deliberate possible amendments to the law.
”I was on the team and we recommended that hawking be made legal for easy regulation of the sector, and also for hawkers to have a way of redress when mistreated. The matter just died silently,” Ng’ang’a noted. IPS was unable to get comment from government as to why this initiative appears to have stalled.
Legalising informal trade would also allow more vendors to get credit for expanding their businesses.
This would enable traders to employ people, something of critical importance in a country where almost 15% of the workforce is unemployed, according to government statistics.– IPS