Zimbabwean police have arrested 14 706 vagrants, street vendors and illegal foreign currency dealers in the capital, Harare, over the past two weeks, a newspaper reported on Monday.
The arrests come as police battle to enforce an urban clearance campaign launched five months ago that saw the arrest and subsequent release of about 46 000 street traders and black marketeers as well as the countrywide demolition of cottages, shacks and houses.
The latest operation intends ”to make follow-ups to monitor the city so that we deal with any of those who are returning to the city and conducting shady deals”, police spokesperson Loveless Rupere told the state-controlled Herald.
Rupere said police were ”dedicated to having a clean city” and would continue rounding up touts and vendors, the newspaper reported.
Operation Restore Order was condemned by the United Nations, which said around 700 000 were made homeless and jobless as a result. During that operation, police swept through Harare’s city centre demolishing flea markets and stalls, and confiscating the wares of street traders.
Similar operations countrywide also saw the demolition of houses and workshops in poor suburbs of the country’s major cities.
Critics of the government say that with more than 70% of the country’s working population unemployed, and increasing levels of poverty, Zimbabweans have little choice but to turn to selling things like fruit, vegetables and cigarettes on pavements as a way of earning a living.
Rupere vowed police would continue with the operation ”until they nabbed all the unruly elements including those loitering for the purposes of prostitution”, the paper said. – Sapa-DPA