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STREET HAWKING: MEANS OF SURVIVAL AND THE LAW
Day in and day out, the streets of Accra are filled with choruses from hawkers shouting on top of their voices to attract buyers to purchase their variety of items they offer for sale.
Hawkers are familiar figures in the towns and cities who sell a large variety of goods. Some sell towels and bed-sheets, others sell fruits, vegetables, toys, soaps and cosmetics.
Some of these hawkers carry their items in barrows while others arrange their items in a tray. Street hawkers mostly dress shabbily.
Street hawkers are made up of both educated and uneducated. Some of these educated hawkers are graduates from accredited universities in the country.
These people ended up on the street because of the unavailability of jobs in the country. Hawking on the street is the means of survival for these people.
Their daily bread depends on the sale they make a day on the street. The families they cater for can be well catered for depending on how well their items were bought.
Although structures have been put in place to settle displaced hawkers, they still sell their items on the streets.
According to some of these hawkers, selling on the streets yields much more profit since you get the items closer to the buyers than being in the confined places provided were the buyers are expected to get closer to them. Some of the buyers feel reluctant to get into their settlements to buy their items.
Many street hawkers enter the trade expecting to move from street vending to become shop owners.
In the course of this expectation, these hawkers face many risks and challenges like robbery, pick pocketing, road accidents, seizure of goods by the authorities, exposure to dust and heat.
Street hawking violates laws of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on noise pollution as hawkers make excessive noise to attract customers to buy their goods.
It also attracts fine because businesses require licenses to operate.
Government should put up more structures to contain hawkers and customers must also get to where the hawkers are to purchase their items this will prevent them from selling on the streets.
The government can also provide job opportunities in the country in order to reduce the number of hawkers on the streets.
story by:Amanda Quartey/pinkfmonlinegh.com