CAIRO - Whether in downtown Cairo or in busy Giza Square, street vendors have one way or another found themselves places on pavements to display a variety of cheap items, mostly Chinese made. Despite the frequent municipal police crackdown on street vendors occupying pavements in different parts of the capital, they usually return to the same spot the very next day because, as they say, they have no other source of income. In a bid to rid the streets of Cairo from chaos and traffic jams partly caused by these vendors, Cairo Governor Abdel Qawi Khalifa has recently decided to hold one-day markets every week in major streets in the capital's districts, such as Downtown, Maadi, Moqqatam. However, his suggestion has been met with reluctance by the potential beneficiaries. “How can I depend on the sales of four days a month for a living,” asks Tareq el-Sayed a street seller stationed on a busy spot in the central Qasr el-Nil Street. Wael Ramadan another vendor in the city centre streets described the governor's project as unfulfilling to the actual needs of a large sector of unemployed young men that come from the governorates. Ramadan explained to Al-Messa Arabic evening daily that he takes commodities on credit from wholesalers, whom he repays after selling the merchandise. “Can the governor live the whole year on one month's pay?” he rhetorically inquired. Another peddler suggests calling upon the governor to lease pavements, such that each vendor would be given a number for the area he is to occupy even if it is a mere two metre square spot. Mahmoud Ali believes that his idea would “solve the problem and take municipality officials off the backs of street vendors”. These street sellers usually choose ‘strategic' locations mainly in the vicinity of government offices and companies to attract purchasers outside their working hours. Although their displayed items prevent pedestrians from having access to pavements, Mona Ibrahim a banker at a downtown branch of Banque Misr said she finds such shopping pleasurable. “The prices are affordable and I do not have to waste time as I find what I need at the doorstep of the bank,” she explained. Another young man, who has been selling goods in Tahrir Square since the revolution says that sweeping pavement vendors out of major streets means “killing them alive”. He was very disappointed that he and his colleagues have been described as thugs despite their role in protecting protesters during the series of violent clashes erupting in Tahrir between protesters and the police in the past few months. “A one day weekly market is not enough” he complained suggesting instead fixed marketplaces connected with means of transport. The governorates, he said, should require minimal rents for stalls in those marketplaces. Meanwhile, Cairo Governor Deputy, Seif el-Islam Abdel-Bari remarked that the governorate is considering the feasibility of holding ‘shifting markets' in busy commercial streets that would move to different parts of the capital every day, allowing vendors to work on a daily basis. This would be a new take on an old Egyptian village tradition, where markets in the same district of a governorate are customarily held on different days of the week.
