Traders of about 30 shops at the Bujumbura City Market –BCM have suspended their daily activities due to the increase in rent, this morning 20 June. The market’s management accuses them of illegally occupying its empty spaces.
Some shops at BMC have closed
“We don’t understand why we should pay additional rent”, says angrily a trader, met at Bujumbura City Market in Ngagara neighborhood in north Bujumbura. He says BCM General Manager has increased BIF 150 thousand on each shop that already paid BIF 250 thousand for only selling their goods on wooden stands. “The extended stands are used to display samples of our goods”, says another trader. She says they do not agree with the measure given that nothing has changed on the building to raise rent money.
“The BCM management doesn’t consider other taxes we pay to Burundi Revenue Authority, Bujumbura City Council and the guards while customers come in twos and threes”, she says. Apart from the 31 closed shops, traders of the surrounding mini-shops have also suspended their activities. “We fear that this measure would also affect our mini-shops. We must support our colleagues”, says a woman who also has shut her mini-shop.
Sion Nikobiri, General Manager of Bujumbura City Market, says the market’s administration has decided to remove all extended stands on the shops because the traders have tried to illegally occupy the empty spaces of the market. “If the situation remains so, this may cause an incident”, he says. He adds that the traders have arrogated to themselves the right to extend their stands up to the gutters. “We cannot allow this. They have one choice. They either must remove all the extended stands or pay for those places”, he says.
The BMC management and traders have held a meeting and agreed on some points. Some suggested the payment of the sum and then continue with their daily activities while others refused because they do not have sufficient goods to extend outside the shops.
Sion Nikobiri has given them three days to think over which choice to make between the two. “We let them continue to work, but after three days, we will announce the final decision”, says Nikobiri.
Bujumbura City Market, one of the biggest markets of the Burundian capital Bujumbura, is occupied by the majority of traders from the former Bujumbura Central Market, burnt on 27 January 2012.
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