‘Ban on tea vendors violates labour law’: Khartoum lawyers

Lawyers in Khartoum filed a memorandum to the Constitutional Court against the ban on tea vendors in one of the main roads of the Sudanese capital.

Lawyer Baroud Sandal told Radio Dabanga that together with other lawyers, he submitted a memorandum to the court against the locality's decision to ban 400 women selling tea from working in the Nile Avenue. The ban has been imposed since September.

“The measure represents a violation of the right to work according to the constitution, considering that any person is entitled to the work of his or her choice. The state has to help him or her by provision of employment.”

Meanwhile the Constitutional Court accepted the lawyers' memorandum and they await its reply to continue the procedure. Sandal said that it is also in violation of the constitution of Khartoum state for social welfare.

In addition to the ban, the state authorities organise campaigns in which they seize equipment and hand out fines to women vendors on Khartoum's main streets.

'Women homeless'

Sandal claimed that the ban has caused great harm to the tea sellers, who usually are women, and the lack of income threatens their families with homelessness.

“Khartoum locality should sit with the women to discuss the arrangements for them, related to security and health aspects, in accordance with the law.”

Awadiya Kuku, the head of Women’s Cooperative Union of Food and Beverage Sellers, reported that women are economically harmed by the decision for the ban.

The union has requested the Ministry of Social Welfare to sign an agreement to allow an unknown number of tea sellers to work at various locations of the Nile Avenue, Green Yard, Jackson Square and El Hawadith street, starting 25 December.

Kuku added that the union requested to add the production of official tea vendor cards and to have the sellers wear uniforms with the union's logo for all the tea sellers in Khartoum locality.

There are more than 8,000 women engaged in selling tea and food, according to an inventory conducted two years ago. In July 2016, the state Commissioner issued a decision to withdraw the permits of vendors to sell tea along Nile Avenue, without the provision of alternatives for the women sellers to carry on their businesses close to shopping areas.