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Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
Hundreds of illegal vendors have trooped back to the Central Business District (CBD) in Masvingo as local authorities begin to slacken on controlling illegal activities in the city. A few weeks ago, Masvingo City Council evicted vendors who were operating at undesignated vending sites in order to bring sanity in the country’s oldest city. A survey by The Herald yesterday showed that illegal vendors were back in the city. Mayor Councillor Hubert Fidze said illegal vendors were leveraging on the prevailing political situation — which has seen the intervention of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) to bring sanity in the country in the wake of obtaining social, political and economic challenges — to reoccupy the city.

“We are faced with a challenge of illegal vendors who have returned into the streets, riding on the situation currently prevailing in the country,” said Cllr Fidze. Illegal vendors, he said, should respect the local authority’s by-laws and return to their designated markets to maintain sanity in the CBD.

“A directive was made by President Robert Mugabe to clean the cities by removing illegal vendors. The dilemma that we have is that running battles with the vendors may send a wrong signal as the nation was urged to remain calm and peaceful by the ZDF. We do not want to be found wanting by the security forces. We have decided to stop operations (of evicting vendors) given the situation,” he said.

Cllr Fidze said council feared that some “mischievous” residents could exploit clashes between illegal vendors and municipal police for political expediency, hence the need for restraint on the part of council.

Council recently removed all the illegal vendors from the CBD after embarking on a joint operation with the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

This was after President Mugabe recently ordered local authorities to bring sanity into the cities by driving away illegal vendors as they were causing unnecessary congestion and depriving registered businesses of potential revenue.