Residents encouraged to submit comments on City’s draft informal trading plans for Gatesville and Athlone
21 July 2020
The City of Cape Town wishes to remind residents that they have less than two weeks left to comment on the draft informal trading plans proposed for Gatesville and Athlone. The deadline for comment is on Friday, 31 July 2020.
A public participation process has been initiated to give the communities an opportunity to comment on the proposals for informal trading in these areas.
In Athlone, over the past few years, there has been a discernible shift in the number of formal and informal businesses operating in the area, meanwhile in Gatesville, business only picks up on Saturdays and not during the week as before.
This has triggered the need to review the current informal trading plans in order to address some of the challenges and to create an enabling, supportive and well managed trading environment for all users of these public spaces.
The following solutions are being considered:
- Converting Gatesville CBD into a Friday and Saturday market and utilising the parking area for the envisaged market. It is anticipated that by converting this to a market, and relocating traders to the parking area, illegal trading, fronting by formal businesses and traffic congestion will be minimised.
- Increasing the bay size from the current four square meters to a maximum of 12 square metres in the two areas.
- Including the informal businesses operating from the illegal structures in the trading plans.
- Introducing a precinct management approach in Gatesville.
- Introducing a traffic study on a model that will assist the City to address traffic congestion in Gatesville
- Other considerations for the Athlone area include closing economically unviable bays and markets, numbering of bays in a logical order to make it easy for law enforcement to enforce the informal trading by-law effectively, repair and upgrading of the debilitated trading structures
The proposed changes will, among other things, address crime, provide bigger trading bays and most importantly, enhance the ability of traders to adhere to the COVID-19 safety regulations.
‘The business community, informal traders and all relevant stakeholders are encouraged to participate in this process. The City recognises the significance of the informal traders and its contribution to the economy and to poverty reduction. It also helps with the creation of employment opportunities that in turn contribute to the household income,’ said Alderman Grant Twigg, Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Management.
The draft informal trading plans can be viewed at ww.capetown.gov.za/haveyoursay or at Subcouncil 11 and 17 offices from 09:00 to 15:00 weekdays.
The public and interested parties or groups are able to submit comments, recommendations or input to the municipality from 1 July 2020 to 31 July 2020.
Comment, input or recommendation can be submitted by Email to: yoliswa.gogela@capetown.gov.za or ronel.struwe@capetown.gov.za or via www.capetown.gov.za/haveyoursay
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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
