By MOHAMMED AL A’ ALI
Published: 15th September 2007
A CRACKDOWN on illegal expatriate street hawkers is being launched in the Central Governorate to protect the livelihood of legal Bahraini traders.
The move follows a call by the Central Municipal Council to step up inspection campaigns against the expatriate hawkers, who it says are mostly runaways and sell food that has not been inspected or properly stored.
Members met governorate security directorate officials who pledged to increase inspections.
Councillors say that consideration must be given to Bahraini hawkers, since the profession is open only to citizens by acquiring their licences from the Central Municipality.
By MOHAMMED AL A’ ALI
Published: 15th September 2007
A CRACKDOWN on illegal expatriate street hawkers is being launched in the Central Governorate to protect the livelihood of legal Bahraini traders.
The move follows a call by the Central Municipal Council to step up inspection campaigns against the expatriate hawkers, who it says are mostly runaways and sell food that has not been inspected or properly stored.
Members met governorate security directorate officials who pledged to increase inspections.
Councillors say that consideration must be given to Bahraini hawkers, since the profession is open only to citizens by acquiring their licences from the Central Municipality.
Council services and public utilities committee chairman Adnan Al Malky said that it would also co-ordinate with the Labour Ministry to ensure that all expatriate hawkers are removed from the streets.
“They have increased lately because of weak monitoring, but security officials who we have met have stressed that they would increase their inspections to ensure that they are caught,” he said.
“Bahrainis are getting licences and paying money to sell on the street, while those expatriate hawkers are not being inspected properly.
“We don’t know anything about them or how they acquired the items they were selling.
“People in the governorate should not buy from expatriate hawkers since most of them are staying in Bahrain illegally and what they sell could be harmful or poisonous because it has not been inspected or checked regularly.”
Meanwhile, Mr Al Malky said security officials have promised to increase patrols in front of schools to protect young students.
“We want our children protected and having police monitoring schools will scare those parasites who prey on them,” he said.
He said that traffic patrols would also increase during Ramadan to ease congestion near mosques during prayer times.
© Gulf Daily News