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12/05/2015: Second round of Joburg and Trader consultations 
 
The City of Johannesburg will begin the second round of consultations with Trader representatives and later with relevant affected Property owners on the promulgation and designation of new trading spaces in the Inner City.
This will take the form of a three day workshop on Monday 18 May, Tuesday 19 May and Wednesday 20 May 2015 to allow the City and Traders to thrash out a draft plan on proposed management models and new trading spaces as well as general bylaw enforcement. This is also being done in compliance to the Constitutional Court Order as well as Section 6A (2) of the Businesses Act. It is important to note that the affected persons referred to in this Section are only the traders or their representatives.

The initial consultation in August/September 2014 involved all relevant inner city stakeholders namely; traders, public transport operators, property owners, formal businesses and residents to share the City’s approach to informal trading and solicit their views as to how the needs of different stakeholders could be balanced.

After considering these inputs and subsequent submissions made, it became clear that this would be a lengthy process that required the City undertake other studies e,g traffic impact assessment, managed lanes and management models that looked at different interventions like full or partial road closures, linear markets, pedestrian sidewalk widening and removal of on street parking to spatially develop a plan of proposed streets and viable trading spaces to be designated as trading areas.

All this had to be done in consideration of other development initiatives in the Inner City so that proposals were not in isolation to integration. Once all these matters have been thrashed out and both the City and Traders are in agreement can the City proceed with the next step of calling for public comment over a period of 21 days on the proclamation and de-proclamation of streets.

The City of Johannesburg has clearly indicated to all stakeholders that it is in the process of finding amicable and sustainable solutions for informal trading in the City.

The process or roadmap was detailed in the consultation meetings with the various stakeholders.

Ends

Issued on behalf of Councillor Ruby Mathang
Member of the Mayoral Committee for Economic Development
City of Johannesburg

Virgil James
City of Johannesburg
(011) 407 7226
082 467 9415
virgilj@joburg.org.zaThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it