From August 2015, the Municipality of Tirana, under the newly elected Mayor Erion Veliaj, took the decision to vacate “illegally occupied” public spaces, taking several consecutive actions against street vendors. For more than a year, battle lines over street vending have reoccurred with perseverance and certainty. Around a total of seven thousand fines (vending violation tickets) have been recorded against street vendors in Tirana, penalizing them for illicit occupation of public spaces, illegal exercise of activity, and pollution. Most of them have also had their merchandise confiscated, cutting off the only source of income for many of their households.
What is this war about? Whom are we fighting and why?
There are two ways to see the whole picture, depending on which side of the battle line one is standing. On one side are the vendors, which form a significant portion of the urban workforce. Most of these people who sell their goods and services on the sidewalks of Tirana belong to the poorest communities, living in the suburbs or the most rural areas of the capital.
Unable to find a job in the formal economy, most of these people cultivate fresh and organic products and offer them to their loyal customers, often on the busiest roads of the city. Overall, they offer easy access to a wide range of goods and services in public spaces, from fruits and vegetables to cigarettes, craft products, books, souvenirs, electronic devices, and so on. Many of them provide the only source of income for their households.
Street vendors belong to the most vulnerable groups in the society, exposed to poverty, physical risks, and injuries from the unregulated traffic. Unquestionably, they are embattled on all sides. But it is the police and the official bureaucracy who are seriously hindering their ability to make a living.
On the other side of the battle are the city authorities, armed with the legal power to remove street vendors based on sanitation and aesthetic concerns. They argue that most of the street vendors compete unfairly with the well-established merchants, who pay taxes and rent their workplace. They consider the sidewalks, where the vendors operate, to lack order and decorum, to be chaotic and congested.
Officially, the authorities aim to formalize street vending, by relocating vendors to authorized markets, where they will be expected to register, pay taxes, and rent. In most of the cases, street vendors offer few products (from private gardens) and they cannot afford to pay taxes or rent their workplace.
But some of the local authorities informally admit that the relocation of street vendors to the few existing markets in the city has been facilitated by a worsening corruption. Monitoring mechanisms are poor and insufficient to tackle bribery practices going on from the vendors to the local officials. Meanwhile, some of the promised markets are still under reconstruction (such as the Pazar i Ri) and some others are planned to be constructed in the near future.
It is still unclear why the government undertook such a hostile campaign against the street vendors, while new infrastructure to accommodate them is still being assembled or planned for the future.
Only early October, the Mayor of Tirana presented the Regulation on Occupancy and Use of Public Spaces, a document regulating the activities of, among others, street vendors, while the actions against them have started more than a year ago. Moreover, the regulation does not categorize different types of street vendors, and thus offers an unsuitable one-size-fits-all kind of solution.
Some consider that the stern attitude of the municipality towards street vending (especially towards cigarette vendors) is related to the newly built kiosks in the city, a dubious private–public partnership of the municipality with a private entity.
And while the police of the Municipality of Tirana continues to clear vendors off the streets, confiscating their goods, fining them daily, many of them fail to provide food to their families or pay school fees for their children. Several cases were brought to the media’s attention, highlighting several incidents and conflicts between the police and ambulant sellers.
A battle against all odds
Battles between street vendors and municipal authorities are constantly waged in many cities in both the developed and developing world. It is worth mentioning recent protests and clashes of street vending communities in New York City, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Hong Kong, and Rio de Janeiro, making this a global phenomenon, without any clear winner.
Street vendors will never disappear, no matter what extreme measures and forms of punishments the authorities will decide to pursue. As long as there is a lack of jobs, and as long as people want to practice their right to engage in economic activities, there will always be people selling and buying on the streets. No city has ever aimed to completely eradicate street vending from its streets. The only battles any government should fight are against poverty and exclusion.
The Municipality of Tirana should learn to live with the street vending community, regulate it appropriately (through tailored-made approaches for each of the categories) and start considering it as a part of the urban commercial culture, adding vibrancy and authenticity to the Albanian history and cultural heritage.
