ABOUT 500 street vendors and hawkers gathered at the City Hall yesterday to call for the lifting of municipal restrictions on them selling their products at the Nelson Mandela Bay 2010 stadium and along routes to the stadium during the Fifa World Cup next year.

The informal traders, whose numbers are fast multiplying with the recession and unemployment, came from as far as Uitenhage, Despatch and Walmer in reaction to claims that they were expected to pay R1500 for a stall at the stadium and that no street vending would be allowed along the stadium routes.

They said municipal regulations apparently banned cooking and the bringing of food to be sold at the stadium without being tested.

“These are clearly attempts to drive us out of business before and during 2010. This started with the Bus Rapid Transit construction which resulted in many of the hawkers having nowhere to sell their products,” said Streetnet International co-ordinator Paul Sambira, addressing the group at the City Hall.

He said his organisation, which represents informal traders, the homeless and shack residents, had launched its campaign “World Class Cities for All” to defend vulnerable street vendors from losing their livelihoods, especially during the World Cup next year.

“We undertake to ensure that no individual or group of street vendors is unduly disadvantaged by any urban improvement or renewal initiatives in preparation for the World Cup,” Shambira said.

Groups represented at the march included Cosatu, Sanco, Jubilee South Africa, the SA Communist Party, Samwu and the Taxi Forum.

Sanco official Roro Ntsinde said there had been no consultation of informal traders by either the municipality or 2010 organisers.

“When BRT was launched, hawkers and vendors were simply moved without being provided with alternative space to trade,” he said.

Representatives from these organisations have also called for a moratorium on eviction of street vendors in the run-up to 2010, a dialogue with the municipality, and the scrapping of restrictions on informal traders during the soccer tournament.

Shambira said evictions of street vendors in cities like Durban and Cape Town had intensified. This had to be resisted in Mandela Bay.

Municipal spokesman Kupido Baron denied that the municipal restrictions were meant to hamper informal traders, saying they were intended to regulate trading and create order during the tournament.

“Hawkers are free to sell their wares at a place reserved for them to be known as Fanmile, outside St George’s Park,” he said.

Specific provisions had been made for hawkers to trade, but no counterfeit goods would be allowed in the reserved trading area.