By JOWIT SALUSEKI –
ZAMBIA’S major towns are awash with illegal markets which are not only an eyesore but a breeding ground for waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
The question is; who is in charge of allocating space for illegal structures?
For instance the infamous Munyaule Market in Lusaka which was designated as a car park for City Market has for many years been allowed to operate notwithstanding its unsanitary conditions.
Sadly, owing to cholera cases which the country has continued to witness since October 6, 2017 resulting in over 40 deaths, the infamous trading centre had its illegal structures razed down.
Lusaka’s Munyaule market which is situated at the junction of Lumumba and Mumbwa Roads has from time immemorial been swarmed with clientele who are magnetized to its cheap restaurants and shebeens despite a strong stench of the effluent in the drainage which is unbearable to human lives.
The market located within the central business district on Lumumba Road near City Market has one small lavatory with a pot-like bow without any connection to the sewer system.
This lavatory which caters for more than 1,000 traders and consumers is only used for urinating and the remains end up into the drainage along the road.
Next to the drainage is a line of traders vending in various food stuff which includes fruits, fritters, sausages, fish and roasted chicken and goat offals commonly known as michopo in one of the local languages.
The place is renowned for its first line of shops which are less than 10 metres away from Lumumba Road with volume of traffic mostly heavy trucks which is a danger to the seemingly unmoved traders.
In the recent years ,the market has had a high traffic of people flocking to its makeshifts restaurants either to sample the meals that are on sale or to patronise the shebeens that stock different kinds of alcoholic drinks which are relatively cheap.
The non existence of lavatories had led to some traders at the market to use empty packets of opaque beer to answer the call of nature and throw them on heaps of garbage that had remained uncollected for a long time.
It had to take presidential directive for the drainage to be unblocked.
Traders familiar with the business centre claimed that some women who work in saloons even had to improvise another way of answering the call of nature by urinating in the buckets of dirty water which they later empted in the drainage opposite the shops.
Because of the scarcity in the number of lavatories some people  who drink opaque beer  from  the  shebeens  used empty  beer packets commonly referred to as ‘flying lavatories’ to answer the call of nature during the night which they threw in drainages causing blockages.
Others such as Rebecca Tembo who owned a restaurant complained of poor sanitary conditions at the trading place, saying  that she  pays 50ngwee for every 20 liters container of water which she fetches from the nearby City market but when queried as to why she had continued to operate her restaurant at an illegal market that has poor sanitation, Ms Tembo said she will lose most of her clients if she was to move out of the trading area as she had a lot of customers who frequent her premises for cheap meals.
“There are a lot of people who come to this restaurant to have their meals including those who work in offices and if I were to close this eating place where are they going to buy affordable meals since most of them can’t afford the meals that are served  in the most of these high class restaurants’’, she asked when this author interviewed her not too long ago.
In the absence of lavatories traders have improvised makeshift pit latrines which have sometimes collapsed on some people.
In Kitwe, illegal trading centres also operating as restaurants made from wood popularly known as ifyikopa and have sprung up near the rail line where people who do odd jobs in town go have their meals at cheaper prices.
While no one is in doubt that the nation is grappling with scarcity of jobs hence the reason why people are undertaking into income generating ventures, the need to operate in clean environment cannot be overlooked.
However is it gratifying that defence forces in Lusaka demolished about 10,000 illegal structures in Lusaka as they closed Kamwala, Munyaule and Matero markets in the continued clean-up exercise to rid the city of cholera.
Even with the commotion in the central business district where some illegal stall owners wanted to resist the closure of their eating places , the men and women managed to shut down the eateries.
Local Government Minister Vincent Mwale said all markets in Lusaka will be thoroughly cleaned and mobile toilets will be mounted before permanent ones were built.
The Minister says he is aware that traders at the markets will be affected but that the government will find an alternative trading place for them.
Mr Mwale notes that what was obtaining at the Munyaule market like any other illegal trading centre was disastrous.
He says he will sit down with the owners of the market to inform them on the development saying there were no negotiations over the matter.
The razing down of Munyaule market in Lusaka like any other illegal market structures which stand aloof in almost all the towns in Zambia should be applauded because perennial diseases such as cholera, typhoid , diarrheoa which are have become synonymous when the heavens open up can be avoid.
Stakeholders such as civic leaders should encourage traders to operate from designated legal markets which abound in the country which sometimes are under occupied.