Call to improve stands for traders in Cape Town CBD

Adderley Street vendors sell their wares on the pavement. Picture: Courtney Africa/African News Agency (ANA)

Cape Town - A proposal has been put forward to Sub Council 16 (City Bowl and surrounds) to improve trading stands within the CBD.

City Bowl DA councillor Dave Bryant said: “This has been outstanding for a number years. During the World Design Capital project in 2014 one of the design workshops focused specifically on ways to improve and ‘regularise’ trading stands in some of our business district areas and markets.”

“Many of the traders struggle to transport their stands and set up their stands across towns, and we often see how they struggle to get over roads and over cobblestones. But it is also making sure that those stands are weather proof,” Bryant said.In the motion it stated that there was a high number of trading stands that were in a bad condition and presented significant challenges for traders in getting them set up and packed away. It also stated that many of the trading stands were messy and that this affected the overall look and feel of trading areas and could negatively affect trade.

Among some of the proposals is that a uniform design for trading stands in the Cape Town CBD be drafted as soon as possible using the available research and development already undertaken by the City and its partners. And that the proposed new design be circulated to the traders and the local sub-council for input, and that funding be sourced from the next available budget cycle to fund the procurement, and that it be replicated elsewhere in the Cape Town metro.

Bryant has proposed that the motion goes to the Urban Management and Economic Development and Tourism directorate for consideration.

In March, the City said there were more than 14000 informal traders operating in Cape Town.