Container vendors outside Pan to be re-registered following devastating looting
ALEXANDRA – The traffic gridlock and trading chaos that used to characterise the area outside Pan Africa Shopping Centre will be a thing of the past, says Men@Work's Mavundla.
An Alex community-based organisation known as Men@Work has been tasked with the responsibility of re-registering all the container vendors outside the Pan Africa Mall so as to bring sanity to a formerly chaotic trading space.
This was confirmed by Papas Mavundla, who is the head of the Disciplinary Committee of the organisation, as he walked up and down the outskirts of the Pan Africa Shopping Centre with a team who were taking down details of container owners in readiness for the return of vendors on July 19.
He said they have been tasked by the Gauteng Department of Economic Development with a mandate to re-register all the vendors in an effort to bring sanity to the trading environment that has been chaotic outside the mall.
“People trading outside the containers will no longer be allowed to return, and this is to bring order and control – which lacked in the previous trading environment – outside the Pan mall. People selling veggies and tomatoes and other items outside of containers will now not be allowed to return, following the looting and destruction of the business precinct during the recent looting,” Mavundla said.
“We want to ensure that only those people registered return to this trading space so we can have control and eliminate the chaos that used to obtain there.”
Mavundla also said some business owners of shops near the Pan mall precinct had indicated they would not be returning after the devastating looting that took place in the past week and that they were in negotiations with the department to allocate those buildings to small traders.
He said there would be security 24/7 to ensure that trading occurs smoothly and peacefully. “We are determined to ensure the trading conditions outside the Pan mall are normalised and will not allow vehicles to park anywhere and anyhow, including the failure to observe traffic lights which often led to gridlock of traffic,” Mavundla said.
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