Tea seller ban continues in Khartoum

Khartoum locality has banned tea vendors from working at El Saha El Khadra and on Nile Avenue for three weeks.

The ban was originally intended last until the celebration of the National Dialogue outputs last week, but tea sellers are still being stopped from working by the authorities, according to the head of the Khartoum tea and food sellers union, Awadiya Koko Mahmoud.

“The locality has to find a satisfactory solution, instead of preventing tea sellers from doing their work,” she told Radio Dabanga.

Many women eke-out a living on the streets of Khartoum and surrounding areas selling tea in the doorways of shops, behind buildings and under trees. Most of them are displaced people uprooted from their home areas by Sudan's armed conflicts. Some are refugees from neighbouring countries. Others have been divorced or widowed and have no other means of feeding their children.

Last August, a security campaign against tea sellers resulted in a number of them being harassed to pay fees, and their equipment confiscated.