KUCHING: Some 200 parking lot hawkers scattered around Lee Ling Commercial Centre at Emart Matang will move to a designated temporary hawker centre opposite the RHB Bank there.
Padawan Municipal Council (PMC) chairman Cr Lo Khere Chiang said these hawkers will slowly come and trade there.
Currently there are 79 trading lots provided and 21 hawkers have been identified.
“The issue is that there is trading all over the place, a lot of complaints. So this is the best place, move everybody down here,” he said when met at the temporary hawker centre yesterday.
Asked if these traders are illegal, he said as the council allows them to trade at the temporary hawker centre, they are not illegal anymore but those trading outside the centre are illegal.
He hopes that one day the centre will be like the one in MJC, which started with only seven stalls but has about 400 stalls now.
In the long run, he told the traders to form a committee and work together with the council to organise programmes to encourage people to come to the centre, thereby bringing business to the traders.
“I’m happy because they are helping themselves. They are not just sitting around for government to come in with money and assistance. They set up stalls doing business, making money. This is the way to go. So the government comes in to assist, give them peace of mind to trade, help them organise, so the traffic is not jammed.
“This is what the government of the day should do. That is what we are doing. And I’m taking one step further, do (hold) programmes. Together with YB (assemblyman) of the area (Fazruddin Abdul Rahman), we will do programmes, promote the place and eventually they have good business and don’t want to move out anymore.”
Asked if the centre will be made permanent, Lo replied in the negative, saying it is not a hawker centre nor a market but car park.
“I shouldn’t say permanent place. But again, like (in) MJC (where traders) have been trading for 10 years. You call that permanent or not? But you can’t. One fine day, they have to move. But that is in the future. There will be a big market coming up, hopefully one day, which can house all the 400 hawkers.”
Lo visited the temporary hawker centre to take a closer look at the place personally, and to speak to the traders who had moved there and enquire how they found trading at the new place.
He was there with PMC Market and Licensing Standing Committee chairman Cr Wilfred Yap and other council staff.
POSTED ON JUNE 20, 2019, THURSDAY 
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