"Kigali’s target is to be a clean city so these street vendors are
an impediment to cleanliness," Mayor Monique Mukaruliza told a new
conference on Tuesday to explain the plan.
Commuters use motorcycle taxis to make their way through early morning
traffic in the Rwanda's capital Kigali, May 11, 2016.
Already boasting one of the cleanest urban centres in Africa, authorities in Rwanda's
capital want thousands of street hawkers to form registered
co-operatives or find formal work as they try to raise taxes and make
the city even tidier, the mayor said.
Kigali has a
reputation for order that is rare on a continent of sprawling and often
chaotic conurbations, and lately officials have stepped up measures
against hawkers on the street, which activists say can be draconian.
"Kigali’s target is to be a clean city so these street vendors are an impediment to cleanliness," Mayor Monique Mukaruliza told a new conference on Tuesday to explain the plan.
She said it included encouraging hawkers to set up co-operatives and register businesses, both of which would pay tax.
Plastic
bags may litter many African cities, but they are banned in Rwanda, so
the capital and its lush green surrounds are free from ragged bits of
plastic fluttering on fences or clogging drains. Workers trim grass
verges along the well-swept roads of Kigali, a city of about 1.1 million
people.
Nevertheless, thousands of hawkers -
undeterred by what they say is police harassment - still offer juices
and fruit or sell cheap sunglasses and trinkets, trying to make living
in a nation where per capita income is just $730 a year.
Human
Rights Watch said in September the authorities beat and arbitrarily
detained "undesirables", such as street vendors, prostitutes and
beggars. Officials deny the charges.
"They take our products and sometimes arrest us,"
said one woman carrying an infant and selling apples in a car park, who
declined to give her name. Each time she is released, she said she
returned to the only work she could find.
It can
carry risks. Theodosie Uwamahoro, 27, a juice vendor at one of Kigali's
main bus stations was killed on May 7 after she tried to run away from a
member of a district security force, police said. The case is under
investigation.
"The person who killed this street vendor was taken to the police," the mayor said, without identifying the person accused.
The
authorities said they were still counting the number of street vendors.
The mayor of Nyarugenge, one of three districts in Kigali, said there
were almost 5,000 in his area.
Mukaruliza said plan was making progress but noted: "We wish this process would be much quicker."
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