Authorities at Saboba, a community in the Northern Region, have extended the Saboba market to help traders adhere to social distancing protocols.
The District Assembly has mounted canopies and moved some of the traders to operate from the extended areas.
Speaking to Citi News, the District Chief Executive for the area, George Bingrini said the move was needed to contain the spread of the Coronavirus.
“We are here today to make sure that people don’t get closer to each other whilst they spend the market. We realized that the space in the market was not enough if we want to space them so we have temporarily acquired canopies and have erected them around where we have put some of the traders to sit under to sell. This is the first time we are doing it so definitely there are challenges. The place is temporary. As soon as this issue of coronavirus is over everybody will go back to transacting their business as usual without any problem.”
Meanwhile, traders have expressed mixed feelings about the development.
“How things are going we are not even happy at all so they should look at it because yesterday if you had been here you would have seen that the whole place was scattered and people’s things were getting missing. We are afraid and we don’t even know how things will be going forward.”
“This place is not enough for us but if they could provide shelter to make us more comfortable then we can manage it,” a trader lamented.
“They told us that it is because of the COVID that they have moved us here, at the old place we were very crowded and because we need to observe social distancing when we came this morning they asked us to transfer to this place so that they will see how we can space ourselves.”
“Here everyone is free, nobody is fighting for space so here is ok for us,” another trader added.
The Northern Region has so far recorded 11 cases of COVID-19.
