Illegal businesses shut down in BCM blitz

Buffalo City Metro officials and the police cracked down on noncompliant business owners in a series of raids across East London on Tuesday that culminated in multiple businesses being shut down.

The businesses, including eight food outlets, were in Vincent as well as in Beacon Bay, near Nompumelelo township.

Other businesses such as welders, scrap metal sellers and vegetable vendors were also closed down for failing to comply with BCM bylaws and operating unlawfully on municipal land, according to municipal health services acting general manager Luyanda Madikizela.

Thirty-three foreigners were also held to verify their paperwork

Six food businesses in Devereux Avenue, Vincent, were found to have been operating without health department certificates.

Madikizela said the main problem around Nompumelelo was businesses encroaching on municipal land without acquiring the necessary documentation.

Many of the closed business had been operating out of informal structures or containers along the road.

“We received a complaint about these businesses selling consumable items in unhygienic places.”

Madikizela said the arrested foreign nationals would be taken to the nearest police station for verification by immigration officers.

The owners of two spaza shop containers operating illegally on municipal land were fined and instructed by city planning officials to leave the area.

Madikizela said: “We are going to monitor the areas, as these business owners have a tendency to reopen their businesses after we have closed them down.

“We have made a commitment to the Beacon Bay police station to effectively monitor the area and make sure the businesses remain closed until the owners acquire the correct documents.”

He said some shops were filthy, and the owners were not in compliance with municipal regulations, including by failing to acquire trading licences.

Siaad Ali, a spaza shop owner from Nompumelelo, said he had not been warned about the raid and would have prepared his documents had he been given time to do so.

“It is unfair to us, because this is our source of income, we depend solely on our businesses to sustain our livelihoods.

“I rent the container, which is in someone’s yard, not on the pavement.”

An emotional vegetable vendor, who did not want to be named, said she felt let down by the government, saying she was not getting proper direction as to where she could run her business.

“I have been trading for more than three decades. I started selling with my mother, and back then we were being ill-treated too.

“I do not understand why we as South Africans are the ones who are being ill-treated, when we are doing our best to sustain our lives. We do not sell drugs, but vegetables.

“I have three children and five grandchildren that I look after using the income I get from the vegetables I sell on the street.

“The ward councillor does not care about us, he has his own faction.”

Ward councillor Nwabisa Mcwabeni said he had received several complaints from Nompumelelo and Abbotsford community members about illegal traders, saying the vendors’ presence affected electricity connections and sanitation facilities.

“I am aware of these illegal traders. Some people are complaining about being mugged, as they state criminals sit there when people have knocked off and are walking home,” he said.

“Trading in illegal substances happens there too, as I have received reports about that.”

After Tuesday morning’s raid, a Dispatch team drove down the same strip in Nompumelelo to check on the atmosphere.

Some of the businesses were still closed, while others had already reopened.

Buffalo City Metro spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said the municipality would intensify actions against noncompliant traders.

He listed the main issues as contravention of the municipal health bylaws concerning hygiene and food premises as well as business licensing regulations.

Eight shops were closed because:

• They operated without valid certificates of acceptability issued by the municipal health and safety department in terms of the regulations governing general hygiene for food premises and food transport;

• Food handlers slept in the business premises where food was stored;

• There were poor structural conditions, unhygienic conditions, poor personal hygiene and unhygienic food preparation areas or surfaces;

• Food unfit for human consumption was being sold; or

• There was noncompliance with food labelling regulations.

Ngwenya said five admission of guilt fines of R1,000 each were issued.

Tuesday’s multi-stakeholder raid was led by the city’s municipal health services department, the police, members of the metro’s disaster management, the city planning division, business licensing, traffic services and law enforcement.

The Black Business Forum’s Jabu Mangena said: “Our people are supposed to be given permission and regulated to apply for business licences.

“There must be a process ... I think the problem of BCM is the issue of how to regulate licensing for hawkers and spaza shop owners.”

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