Nakawa market vendors to get special identification tags

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT |   Nakawa Market has started processing Identity Cards for all market vendors as one of the measures to heighten security and reduce crime in the market. 

The Market chairman Christopher Okuni says that the measure will mainly protect vendors who spend the night in the market, especially during the current lockdown. Up to 400 vendors, the majority of them women, sleep in the market in line with guidelines issued by President Yoweri Museveni, to tame the disease.  

Okuni says that a number of bad elements had started taking advantage of the situation, disguising as vendors to enter the market in the cover of darkness. He is optimistic that with special identity cards, only persons with permission will be allowed to access the market in the night.     

Okuni says they will issue IDs to all vendors including those that are currently not working. The market population is estimated at 6000 vendors, he says.    

Each vendor is required to pay 5000 Shillings for the card. However, in the interim, they will receive a temporary paper made identification document, as they wait for the plastic ones yet to be printed. The ID will bear the name of the vendor, where they come from and the market Zone from which they operate. The market has six zones named A to F and each is famous for different produce.  

However, Okuni says the program is being sabotaged by some political figures in Nakawa who are stopping vendors from paying to access cards.  

Emerida Kyijanangoma, a tomato vendor in the market says IDs will help them eliminate people who are not Nakawa Market Vendors. Some vendors say there are people who come from outside and hawk items in the market pretending to be from the same market.     

Kyijanangoma says people working in the market should be identifiable using IDs. She says has not yet paid for the IDs but will do so immediately she gets the money.    

Another vendor who deals in Irish Potatoes, William Ndawula, us confident that with the security in place, no outsiders can access the market in the night.  He, however, says the ID idea is good although they were not informed prior to the decision. He says that he has no money to pay for the I’D and asked that they are issued free of charge or be given time to get the money.   

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URN