In the months just preceding the last election I encountered a surprising number of youthful potential voters who were unable to register as voters because they lacked national identity cards.
What was more surprising was that they were issued with this vital document. But as they were mostly street vendors involved in informal trade in various goods, they had been unable to redeem their IDs from their merchandise supplier where they had deposited them in exchange for goods to sell.
The sales having gone awry, and the goods lost for one reason or another, the street vendors were unable to retrieve their documents and therefore unable to neither register nor vote in an election.
Due to the absence of opportunities for the approximately 415,000 youth aged between 18 and 35 in Mombasa, an increasingly large number are opting for street vending for a livelihood.
This creates a problem for the City of Mombasa.
The most visible problem is that of congestion and traffic disruption. Congestion is caused by the vendors who have temporary structures on pavements. Those using building walls and pavements for display as well as those plying the streets.
This congestion on the pavements results in pedestrians walking on the roadways disrupting free flow of traffic. The flow of traffic may be further disrupted if street vendors are selling their wares from carts, which they station or push along the road.
A less visible but perhaps more impactful problem street vending brings about is one of health and sanitation.
With the majority of the street vendors working hours in areas not planned for their activities, the lack of toilet facilities makes health concerns very real.
Littering is yet another issue. Research indicates that better sanitation reduces hospital admissions by 20-25 per cent.
The most dramatic of the problems associated with street vending is the conflict with authorities. When a decision is made to kick out the street vendors from their sites, the enforcers target both merchandise and persons.
A tactic used after myriad and often conflicting notices to vacate have been issued, is that of officers in civilian clothing posing as buyers before pouncing on the less vigilant vendors, taking them into custody and their merchandise away supposedly as evidence, which is never returned.
These forays by the local authorities breed a lot of resentment and may lead to resistance, retaliation and damage to shops within the vicinity.
The question is then asked, “Why don’t the authorities have designated areas for the vendors to sell their wares?”
Street vendors go to places with high foot traffic which are traditional transport hubs and routes or periphery of commercial centres or at events spaces.
The street vendors present the prospective buyer with not only high visibility of merchandise for selection but ease of payment as well, at a lower price.
To replicate this requires thinking out of the box, as attraction of the low cost must be managed despite overheads that formal structures and services would inevitably bring.
The location likewise would necessarily either be in established pedestrian routes or have such a strong magnetic pull to attract buyers irrespective of their intended route and destination. To do this, the low pricing must be supported with extensive variety as well as ease of commuting.
As things stand now, Mombasa county seems to have demarcated Tolerated Zones, where there is leniency in enforcement of compliance as would seem in the case of the approach to the Likoni Ferry where the problem is so extreme that the Mama Ngina Waterfront can only be comfortably accessed by vehicle from one end only.
It may also have adopted a Negotiated Space for vendors along the once motorable Biashara Street into the Old Town to the residents’ inconvenience.
All this while the request for proposal issued over a year ago for the county’s markets of Mwembe Tayari, Sega and Makupa is yet to evolve into anything tangible for the county.
The Mombasa youth may have to continue using their national ID cards as collateral for merchandise for a little longer as the county struggles to get its act together.
