By: Yusuf M Hasan
HARGEISA (Somalilandsun) – The city municipalities has started relocating hawkers it removed from city streets.
The Hargeisa municipal council has provide 59 former city centre hawkers with stalls at the Gobanimo market in 26th June district and Inji market in Ahmed Dagah district where they will conduct their small scale enterprises legally.
The 59 beneficiaries, who were all forcibly removed by the municipality from their former operation base around the city hotel and the main road to central police station, were allocated letters of possession by the deputy mayor Mr. Mohamed Abdilahi Ur’ade.
The stalls allocations that will see 28 of the hawkers shifting to Gobanimo and 29 to Inji markets respectively was made after they succeed in a lottery for the stall supervised by members of the municipalities finance committee.
This becomes the first batch of evicted hawkers to be allocated promised alternate and legal business operation areas by the municipality that forcibly removed them from several areas they used to operate in within the Somaliland capital city.
During the evictions which the municipality said was necessitated by the need to protect legal and tax paying merchants against the illegal hawkers resulted in a number of deaths and injuries as a result of violent clashes that ensued between municipality employees supported by police and the then defiant hawkers.
According to deputy mayor the use of lottery in allocating stalls was decided by the full council after it was realized that the evicted hawkers far outnumbered the currently available stalls. He informed that the municipality is pursuing other avenues of ensuring that all those evicted from their former though illegal SME areas are allocated stalls.
