The Editor Zambia
OPPOSITION political figures criticising Lusaka Mayor Chitambala Mwewa for implementing a Clear Path agenda to remove street vendors and clean the city are doing a disservice to the country.
The critics are playing cheap politics to gain political mileage. 
Instead of offering workable alternatives, the critics are defending disorder in the name of sympathy for the poor while undermining efforts to restore order and sanity in the capital.
According to Lusaka City Council records, revenue has increased to K14 million per week following the relocation of street vendors. This is as a result of levies paid to the right offices.
The relocation has brought structure and accountability to a system that was previously chaotic and open to abuse. The increase in Levy collection has shown that order can also benefit the city financially.
The real beneficiaries of street vending were not the vendors themselves, but a few political elements who built illegal structures and collected monthly charges from poor street vendors.
For years, vulnerable traders were exploited by those who pretended to protect them, while the council and the city lost revenue that should have gone toward services and development.
There is a clear need for a clean and well-managed city. Some cadres opposed the selection of Chitambala Mwewa as the mayoral candidate for Lusaka precisely because his message was clear: Lusaka needed sanity.
Out of all his campaign promises, he has scored about 80 per cent, a record that his critics have failed to acknowledge.
People must respect and obey the law. In the name of fighting high levels of poverty, which have been with the country from time immemorial, marketeers cannot wantonly decide to trade in the middle of walkways, highways, footpaths, road islands, bus stops, along all major road.
Poverty cannot be used as a licence for lawlessness.
There is no support for indiscriminate and disorderly trading.
Countries like Rwanda, Morocco, and Algeria have no street vending, yet their economies remain buoyant.
All street vendors, regardless of their merchandise, must go into designated premises and markets.
Street vending never became legal, and people standing idle and disorderly around town, especially on road islands, must be discouraged, because there is no reason for someone to come into town simply to sit, stand about, or walk around aimlessly.
Petty thieving, drug abuse, wanton damage to property, and the generation of waste are started by such uncontrolled, disorderly, and idle groups in the CBD and elsewhere.
At this opportune time, Chitambala Mwewa is an ineffable and priceless gift to Lusaka and Zambia, and God’s ordained time is undeniably the best.
