Vendors who have been operating at Remera Taxi Park have expressed discontent over a decision by local authorities to relocate them from their area of operation to another place nearby.

Speaking to The New Times yesterday, some of the vendors expressed their dissatisfaction on how the matter to relocate them is being handled.

"I don’t think we are causing any chaos in this place as the authorities like to put it, because we have our permanent places from where we operate,” Jean Kazungu one of the vendors at the park said .

According to Jean de Dieu Niyonkuru, another vendor, the place where they are being relocated is just not big enough to accommodate the big number of the traders.

"The place is so small and we are many, I don’t think we shall be able to fit in there,” he said. The traders operating in the taxi park are estimated at over 300.

Niyonkuru added that the facility where they are being taken does not have parking space, a factor to which he attributed a foreseeable loss of potential customers as they will not be coming to buy their merchandise.

In an exclusive interview, the Executive Secretary of Remera Sector, Jacques Uwimana, said that plans to relocate the vendors have since been finalised and they are supposed to vacate the park to a nearby SAR Motors yard, also in Remera.

"We want to relocate them to this place because a Taxi park and a market cannot operate in the same place,” Uwimana said explaining the motive behind the decision.

"We want them to go in a more defined place where people will be going to buy whatever they want, and to decongest the park and reduce the chaos that the vendors have been causing.”

Vendors who have been working in the park include dealers in second hand clothes, cosmetics and general merchandise.

In a phone interview, ATRACO boss Ludovic Twahirwa (Dodo) said that the decision to relocate the vendors has nothing to do with ATRACO since they did not have any problem with the vendors.

"If they have decided to relocate them it is okay with us, but we did not have any problems with the vendors since their trade is a common phenomenon around the world,” commented Twahirwa.

According to the authorities, the deadline for the vendors to have vacated the Taxi park is 10 June.

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