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Lumbidzani Dima, Chronicle Reporter
GWANDA Town Council has said it will start enforcing stringent health measures that require all street vendors selling food to have medical examination certificates as part of efforts to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

The municipality said all medical examination certificates must be valid for 12 months.

In an interview, Gwanda Mayor Councillor Njabulo Siziba said vendors must be medically examined to ensure they are free from any disease that may spread to their customers.

“We are going to fully enforce a law whereby any person who wishes to sell food as a street vendor shall obtain a certificate from a medical practitioner, certifying that on the date of certification, he or she was examined and does not suffer from any infectious or contagious disease,” said Clr Siziba.

A contagious disease is one that is easily spread by transmission of a pathogen from an infected person to another person.

Clr Siziba said failure to produce the certificate will attract heavy fines or a ban from operating in the city centre.

He said they were also working on clearing the highway of notorious vendors and relocating law-abiding ones to designated areas.

“Most probably, some vendors will not consider the seriousness of these medical examinations and not adhere to the by-law, leading to them being removed from the streets, thus reducing the number of vendors operating on that highway,” said Clr Siziba.

He said the highway will be fully cleared after ongoing construction of vending sites in almost all council wards is completed.

“We have identified sites in almost every ward, and those vending sites will enforce the medical certificate law.

We tried evicting vendors operating on the highway, but because we realised that this is their only source of income, we resolved to create more vending sites,” said Clr Siziba.

He said after construction of vending bays, the municipality will engage Zupco to avail transport to the sites.