/ 8 November 2013

City of Jo’burg extends time for vendors to register

City Of Jo'burg Extends Time For Vendors To Register

The City of Johannesburg said on Friday the verification process was initially meant to focus on just seven key streets.

It was later agreed with the informal trading sector leadership to be extended to 17 streets.

"The verification process seeks to register all traders who are legally supposed to be trading in the streets of Johannesburg. Once the process was complete, a report would be presented to the city.

"The city is confident that, once this is done, key solutions can be found and that all parties will benefit."

The South African National Traders' Retail Association said on Monday that the verification process was chaotic.

"It is total chaos as their [vendors'] documents are being verified one at a time," spokesperson Edmund Elias said at the time.

He said thousands of displaced street traders gathered at the metro centre in Braamfontein for the verification process on Monday.

"Very few people have been processed since 8am. They are not given a slip or a piece of paper to indicate that they have registered."

Block by block
City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane said at time it agreed with informal traders' leaders on Saturday that the verification would be done block by block, starting with traders at Hoek, De Villiers, King George and Wanderers streets.

"We were expecting 120 people today [Monday], not the entire city," he said.

The city said on Friday that site visits were conducted as part of the process.

It was found that there were discrepancies between the allocated stalls on the city's database and the number of stalls that were observed.

Several traders were being allocated smaller areas, and this created overcrowding.

It was also found that some stands were being traded and leased illegally.