Three weeks ago, Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA resumed operations to evict street vendors in an attempt to create trade order in the city.
The team of KCCA law enforcement officers backed by armed police officers have been evicting vendors from Ben Kiwanuka street, Kikuubo lane and Allen road. About 100 vendors were arrested last week and remanded to prison.
Currently, KCCA is relocating street vendors to various markets in Kampala city. According to KCCA, they have identified over 1,000 works spaces that the evicted street vendors can occupy.
However, records from KCCA indicate that there are about 20,000 vendors in the five city divisions.
Matooke Republic has today visited several streets that used to ‘house’ vendors. We found the streets empty. Nonetheless, a few vendors have refused to vacate the streets urging the government to at least allocate them a street in town where they can operate in the evening when people are heading home.
“We buy our merchandise from arcades. So chasing us away means arcades people are losing customers. Government should allocate us a street where we can work from 4 pm to 10 pm,” one vendor told this website.
Below are some of the photos we captured around the different streets of Kampala;
