No trading plan yet for Dunoon rank

The City has yet to finalise a plan for traders at the Dunoon taxi rank.

Traders who run businesses from kiosks at the rank have concession letters, but it’s likely they will only start paying for trading permits after December, once the City has finalised a trading plan for the rank, says mayoral committee member for economic growth James Vos.

The traders have not been paying since the completion of the R40 million upgrades to the taxi rank in 2019.

Last month, traders at the rank told Tabletalk the City had shown them a plan, which included trading permits, last year, but nobody had followed up from the City’s side since then (“Confusion over Dunoon traders’ permit payments,” Tabletalk, May 25).

About 30 traders operate informally from makeshift stalls just across the road from the kiosks but it is unclear whether they have the City’s permission to be there. Mr Vos did not respond to our query about this by deadline.

Mr Vos said the concession letters were issued to historical traders who were at the old Dunoon taxi rank before the 2019 upgrades.

“The City is currently finalising the implementation of the Dunoon informal trading plan,” Mr Vos said. “Once the process is finalised, all historical traders who hold concession letters issued by the City will be migrated to the informal trading permit system (ITPS) as per internal processes/applicable regulations.”

Once that process had been finalised, the traders would be able to pay informal-trading permit fees to the City, and only then would the City determine how much the traders should pay, he said.

In October 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa gazetted a waiver allowing trading permits for informal vendors to be relaxed. It expires in December 2022, according to a Thursday May 26 statement by Mr Vos.

Mr Vos said regardless of the status of the trading plan, all traders were exempted from paying informal-trading fees until December 2022.