By Alpha Daramy Sesay
The chairlady of Abacha Street Traders, Jattu Conteh has welcomed a statement by Mayor-elect Franklyn Bode Gibson of the Freetown municipality that he will cut down on the rampant street trading in greater Freetown.
Gibson had in a radio programme said that there was no time for more sensitization on bye-laws governing street-trading and indiscriminate dumping of garbage on the streets.
While Jattu Conteh said that it was no bad idea that the city council was putting measures in place to get rid of trading on major streets in Freetown busines district, including Abacha Street, she asked that such a decision should be based on “national interest”.
She expressed confidence in the new arrangement at the council but called on the mayor-elect to build more market places to accommodate the growing market population along the streets.
“For government to get us off the streets it must provide markets for us so that we can do our business in an ideal atmosphere,” she said, adding that many traders who had stalls at Malama-Thomas Street, Fire Burn and Old Railway Line had vacated those places to attract more customers on the main Abacha Street.
Jattu complained about the “deplorable conditions” under which they do their business, saying that they had operated in the open and on the streets just to make ends meet. She said they lacked proper storage facilities to keep their wares thereby exposing their goods to thieves and rodents.
She said one of their pressing constraints was the lack of market space and warned that the Freetown municipality would not succeed in their stride to curbing street-trading if government did not implement laws that would deter foerign shop owners from retailing.
“If the shop owners are selling goods at retail prices how can we do business when the buyers will prefer to buy in shops rather than to us at the same price,” she lamented.
She said the former Mayor Herbert George Williams promised to build for them a market at Fisher Street which did not materialize, before looking forward to meeting the new city father to express their concern and need for markets.
