Road side food vendors have defied a directive by the Nakuru County government Ministry of Health banning them from operating both in the town’s CBD and other sections of the town to avert a Cholera disease outbreak.
Last week Nakuru County Public Health officer Samuel Kingo’ri issued a notice to street food hawkers to stop their trade as a way of mitigating an outbreak of Cholera that has so far claimed some lives in Migori and Homa-Bay Counties.
Kingo’ri had led a contingent of public health officers and police in a swoop on food hawkers in the CBD where many were arrested, but an investigation by this writer revealed that a number of food hawkers were still carrying out the banned activity citing lack of an alternative source of income.
A spot-check in several parts of Nakuru town indicated normal road side food hawking activities even as most hawkers remained wary of the directive to stop selling food to members of the public in open space.
A food hawker along Nakuru-Kabarak road in the outskirts of Nakuru Dorothy Akinyi said that she was not keen on abandoning food hawking because she has no alternative source of income.
She argued that the government was not sincere in its directive because most of the traders had already paid tax.
“I cannot just stop doing what I do to earn a living. I have already paid tax. Where does the government want us to go now? This is impossible because I have no other means of surviving. I will continue doing my work until they tell me where to go. I am not afraid of being arrested,’’ said Akinyi.
On Thursday a court in Nakuru released two women unconditionally after they had been charged with hawking food in the town against the government’s directive.
The women had pleaded guilty to the offences and told the Magistrate that they were poor residents with no alternative source of income.