By Correspondent
A few months after Harare banned the weekend vending of second-hand clothes in the CBD, Bulawayo City Council is bringing back the same trade.
BCC is set to reintroduce the vending popularly known as Khothama, as a way of earning foreign currency.
Bulawayo is reportedly under pressure from its workers who are demanding salaries in forex.
Meanwhile, all its suppliers are also demanding payments in foreign currency.
This has since driven BCC to come up with a variety of measures to raise the forex.
Among them is the reintroduction of the “khothama boutique”, with those interested being mandated to pay for the stalls in foreign currency.
Harare banned the practice operating from Park Street after revelations that political parties were running cartels there.
The Small to Medium Enterprises Committee stated that Park Street would not be turned into a formal market.
Chairperson of the Committee, Denford Ngadziore said that four politically connected space barons were illegally collecting money from informal traders.
This is after they misled them that they would get trading space along Park Street in the Central Business District.
“The Committee is reliably informed that some desperate traders are currently contributing registration fees of US$20 to the barons.
“They target registering 3 000 traders and getting US$60 000 for doing nothing.
“Thereafter the barons intend to charge US$10 per trader and stand to make US$30 000 a day,” he said.
Ngadziore said if the invasion of parking bays succeeded in other cities, it doesn’t mean it will succeed in Harare.
“As a City and as an SMEs Committee, we will assure you that the plan will fail. The CBD parking bays will remain as such,” he added.