After successfully sweeping out vendors from the streets, Blantyre City Council (BCC) is also planning to remove tailors, in a move that is bound to break tailors’ hearts as they have been plying their trade along the city’s streets since the colonial period.

Through a series of operations, BCC has been chasing out vendors who constantly raid the streets to sell their merchandise but tailors have always been exempted from such operations, as traditionally they are known to court the verandah when plying their trade.

But now, following an increase in complaints that tailors too, make the streets unclean as well as cause unnecessary street congestion, particularly along the Haile Selassie road in Blantyre where they are based outside Asian shops, the council is ready to give them a boot.

Anthony Kasunda, Public Relations Manager for BCC said “the council has plans to relocate tailors” but could not specify the time.

“We are in the process of finding the right place for them to ply their trade. And we are working with the Tailors Association of Malawi as well as Ministry of Trade on this assignment,” he said.

However, while admitting to discussing the issue with the council, Daudi Kaponda, chairman of the Tailors Association of Blantyre said the tailors were at the meeting only to set their position clear and that is, they do not wish to be relocated.

“We have been here since colonial rule and have existed without any problem throughout the four regimes Malawi have had. We are not against their move; we just want them to understand us,” he said.

When put to him that they are messing up the streets with rags and cloth-cuttings, he said “we do sweep the streets every evening when we knock off.”

Kaponda also said tailors act as security shields to Asian shops as robbers are afraid to break into the shops in the presence of tailors.

“The streets are also convenient for both our local and foreign customers because the moment they buy some clothing they want adjusted, we fix it for them right there and then,” said Ishmael Phiri, a tailor who has plied his trade along the Haile Selassie road for a couple of decades.

Phiri also said: “We are part of the fabric of the national economy and how the government deals with us can make or break a significant aspect of our economy.”

However, grave doubts prevail whether BCC will really relocate tailors. The council is grappling with many challenges, and considering the unavailability of space in Blantyre city, there is little likelihood of the operation being executed.