ARUA MAIN MARKET GETS EMPTY AS TRADERS MOVE BACK TO STREETS
The unoccupied upper floor of the main market. Photo by Sunday Amandi.
By Sunday Amandi
Arua city
Despite the efforts put by the city authorities to crack down on street vending in the city in April this year, it has almost become a normal business in the city with a good number of vendors making money along the streets like Lemarejoa road, Idi Amin road, and others.
Majority of the vendors who went to the main market due to the pressure of events have returned to their previous locations, almost leaving the upper floor of the main market empty.
Most of those who are insisting on street vending also have their reasons ranging from the un-occupied stalls in the main market being owned, to lack of enough capital for them to operate their businesses in the gazzetted markets.
One of the vendors who accepted to talk anonymously says, they operate outside because their businesses are too small to occupy stalls in the market. “We who are selling along the streets are people with very little capital, those who bring things in the market call us to go and buy from them, then we go and sale elsewhere, that idea of saying we should all go to the market is not bad, if there was enough capital we would go to the markets,” the vendor said.
Another one claims that, all the unoccupied stalls in the main market are owned and they have nowhere to be accommodated. “We sale at the same price with those people in the market, but for us, we have our bosses in the market, that decision of sending all the vendors in the market is good, but we don’t have stalls there, those stall are owned and the name of the owners are even written, there is no free stall there, all of them are owned.”
But Nelson Dada, the chairperson of the market vendors association in the central market denies these claims saying, vendors think businesses can’t do well in the main market, “Those who were sitting under the veranda of the market or anything of the nature, they have all gone back, currently over 2000 vacant places are remaining, the fact remains that, people have got that mindset of saying things cannot be bought in the fast floor,” Dada said
It seems a lot still needs to be done by all the parties involved in the enforcement of the trade act in the city, but efforts to get some clarification from the incharge of the market order enforcement in the city was unsuccessful by press time.
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