HARARE central business district resembled a war zone
yesterday as police continued to engage in cat-and-mouse chases with vendors
and rogue commuter omnibus crews.
Trucks full of police details were patrolling the city all
day, throwing teargas on pockets of suspected vendors running away from the law
enforcement agents trying to push the illegal merchants out of the city to
contain the cholera outbreak.
The virulent, stone-age disease has so far claimed 49 lives
out of the over 6 000 reported cases.
There were several trucks, giving reinforcement to
municipal police officers driving away the vendors as well as targeting
commuter omnibus crews operating at illegal pick-up points.
Teargas contaminated the air, with innocent motorists and
pedestrians being caught in the crossfire.
“The situation is very bad. I am now suffering from
influenza due to the teargas,” one shop owner told NewsDay Weekender.
“There are always many trucks, numbering over five,
patrolling in a convoy with police officers throwing teargas at any group of
people they suspect to be vendors,” his shop keeper interjected.
Even commuters were not spared, with police throwing
teargas canisters each time they found them waiting for kombis at undesignated
sites.
“They (police) told us that if we go to undesignated
commuter omnibus ranks, no kombis will come to those illegal pick-up points and
they are also targeting us, forcing us to go to the designated pick-up points,”
one commuter said.
The joint operation between the Zimbabwe Republic Police
and municipal police is set to continue until the vendors have moved out of the
streets, according to authorities. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment