Vendors quit Shs28b Gulu market stalls

Gulu. A section of Gulu Main Market vendors have abandoned some stalls in the newly-constructed Shs28b market citing low sales.
Traders say some stalls in the market are so isolated that their customers cannot easily access them.

The market is located in Laroo Division, Gulu Municipality.
Many have now pitched camp at the parking yard that is meant for both loading and offloading produce brought to the market for sale.
Ms Federesi Akumu, a vendor, told Daily Monitor in an interview on Wednesday that many have lost business since their stalls cannot easily be accessed by customers.

Ms Akumu, a dealer in children’s clothes, said they sometimes go without making any sales for several days.
Mr Ali Bahemuka Okema, another vendor, said the market was messed up right from the time the stalls were allocated.
“The stalls were not allocated in an organised manner. You find vendors selling tomatoes mixed with those selling local herbs or meat stalls mixed with tailors thus forcing some vendors to abandon their stalls and get to the open space for easy access to customers,” he said.
Mr Okema said some vendors have been forced to relocate to other markets where they can easily be accessed by customers.

The Gulu Market Vendors Association chairperson, Patrick Omaya, however, said some vendors are operating at the parking yard due to lack of space inside the market.
“It is upon the municipal officials to relocate the vendors who are operating outside to other gazetted markets within the municipality,” he said.

The Laroo Division chairperson, Mr Moses Abonga, blamed the mess on those who allocated the stalls to the vendors.
“The process was infiltrated by politicians thus failing it at the onset. Inside, the vendors are so disorganised, with vendors selling unrelated items mixed up,” he said.
He said this has affected the revenue collected from the vendors.
“We had projected to collect Shs1 billion annually from the market, but we get less than that,” he said.

The Gulu Municipality mayor, Mr George Labeja, said he is yet to look into the matter and decide on appropriate measures to be taken.
At the moment, vendors with stalls pay rent of between Shs5,000 and Shs10,000 monthly, while those with lockup shops pay between Shs100,000 and 200,000 depending on the location.

Our efforts to get a comment from the Gulu Municipality Town Clerk, Mr Francis Barabanawe, were futile by press time.
Gulu Main market was constructed with funds from African Development Bank at a tune of Shs28 billion.
The market was handed over to the vendors in 2015, and it accommodates more than 4,000 vendors.

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