Mombasa Municipal Council plans to relocate hawkers from the central business district to Mackinon Market.

The council has set aside Sh17 million to build a four storey building where the first set of hawkers will be accommodated, Mr Abdalla Salim Mwambani, the deputy director of Social Service and Housing in the municipality, said.

Similar rehabilitation is expected to be carried out on the dilapidated Mwembe Tayari market, where some of the stalls will be reserved for hawkers.

Last year, the Ministry of Local Government promised to spend Sh250 million on rehabilitating the market. If the pilot project succeeds, similar projects will be undertaken in other major markets in the town to ensure that hawkers are removed from the CBD to decongest the town. In the recent past some hawkers have been able to graduate from streets to take up space in exhibition shops.

Mr Mwambani, who is in charge of the markets, said there has been an influx of hawkers migrating from other major towns to Mombasa.

Felix Mogaka, the chief executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mombasa branch, confirmed that most hawkers are migrants from other parts of the country.

Hawking is allowed in some designated locations within the CBD. In a policy that was borrowed from Nairobi, some lanes were reserved for hawkers.

According to Mr Mwambani, this was done as a temporary measure since available lanes were not enough to accommodate more than 12,000 hawkers who operated from the town.

The long term solution was to expand Mishoromoni market into a hawkers'complex to accommodate 10,000 hawkers.

However, this did not materialise as the council had no plot of its own to construct the modern market.

Due to lack of funds, the ambitious project came a cropper.

Julius Mutua Kitavi, who hawks curios, laments that since he was moved from the street his sales have dwindled.