Representatives of international informal economy workers' organisation - street vendors, homeworkers, wastepickers and migrant workers gathered in Durban to share the platform with urban planners and researchers to discuss the inclusion of informal economy workers in urban planning in global cities. The two-day urban policies colloquium "'World Class Cities' and the Urban Informal Economy: Inclusive Planning for the Working Poor", held from the 24th -25th April 2006, was co-hosted by StreetNet, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Organising and Globalising) and the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The Colloquium coincided with the 4th WIEGO General Assembly. The colloquium attended by 150 people from more than 40 countries sought an answer to the question: "What are the conflicting interests that have to be managed in integrating informal enterprises and workers into cities in the developing world as cities strive to achieve 'world-class' status?"

On the 24th April, representatives of international informal economy workers' organisation - homeworkers, wastepickers and migrant workers offered perspectives on urban planning, sharing the platform with planners. On the 25th a Policy Dialogue on the regulation of public spaces within cities heard street vendor organisations and policymakers give their different perspectives of the problems of management and allocation of public space for informal trading.

Ela Bhatt, founder of Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), said in the opening session that the Colloquium was well timed when half the developing world's people live in cities, and the rate of migration from urban areas is swelling many urban areas. The urban poor and informal economy workers were too often treated as undeserving beneficiaries of urban infrastructure investments. She said that ironically research has established that the working poor in fact make a sizeable contribution to city and national economic growth.

Caroline Skinner, University of KZN, said one of the greatest challenges to inclusive planning for the urban working poor was the focus since the mid-80s on the ranking of cities in the global hierarchy on the economic power they command. The notion of global cities shifts priorities away from people-centred development. This results in increasing spatial segregation between rich and poor and regulations that limit the activities of poor households.

Marty Chen, WIEGO CEO, in her presentation on "Urbanisation and Informalisation", said global cities had broadly three choices in approaches to the informal economy.

•  Inclusion and development;
•  Regulation and containment;
•  Exclusion and marginalisation.

In the presentations that followed on the first day examples were provided on interventions and policies that could improve conditions as well as those that had failed because they did not take into account the needs and concerns of the workers in the informal economy.

Homeworkers’ discuss problems

Sapna Joshi, of HomeNet South Asia, that represents a network of homeworkers in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, talked about the problemsthat people have working from the space in which they also live.

In South Asia, there are about 50 million homebased workers, out of whom 80% are women Homeworkers need storage for raw materials and the finished goods that are produced. Many live in slum settlements and because of leaking roofs lose income when their goods are soiled during the rainy season.

Several problems relating to the lack of infrastructure were raised, one being the higher unit costs of electr-icity and another was the insecurity of eviction which contributes to fear of the loss of place of production.

Renana Jhabvala (SEWA) made a presentation on the Parivartan Slum upgrading program in Ahmedabad, India,which was an example of a project where people in the informal settlement were able to come into the policy mainstream and governance, as well as receive the infrastructure through public/private partnership. Sixty percent of the occupants involved were home-workers. As a result of the project there was an increase in the level of productivity of homeworkers as they were able to work longer hours, they had lower mon-thly health costs and more children attended school.

Wastepickers’ organisation

Laxmi Narayan of KKPK wastepickers organisation in Pune, India, said that wastepickers contribute an important economic role to the city and have created a whole new network of jobs in the recycling chain, but experience hazardous and dirty work conditions for very low incomes.

The 5 000 waste pickers in Pune salvage almost 150 tons of recyclable material per year, and as a result have reduced the city's costs of handling waste by US$1.5 million/year. They have also had to face competition from multinationals who local government has outsourced to. KKPK distributes safety gloves and has negotiated for free health services for officially registered wastepickers.

Martin Medina, a researcher, described how waste-picker cooperatives have been formed to stop repression and change hazardous working conditions in Brazil. A battle for recognition of wastepicker rights was fought and led to the formation of MNCR the world's largest wastepicker organisation with 500 co-operatives and (60 000 members) that has fought successfully for integration of their participation in waste management programmes at local government level through public partnerships.

Richard Dobson, a planner in the Warwick Junction Development Project, Durban, said that there was a role for the city to intervene positively. In Durban, 30 tons of cardboard are collected everyday as a result of an initiative which eliminated a middleman who had collected cardboard only late at night, making the collectors more vulnerable. Dobson said, a 'buyback centre' was developed to stop this exploitation and as result the income earned by collectors has doubled.

Migrant workers confront discrimination

Gaby Bikombo, a refugee living in Durban spoke of the obstacles created by local government for migrant workers who found their attempts to earn an honest living blocked by red tape and discriminatory practices.

Bikombo who is a street barber, described how the Siyagunda Association of street barbers had been formed to tackle these problems and through negotiations and discussion with local government some of the problems that are faced in earning a living, such as the issue of permits to registered refugees, have been solved.

Street vendors face poor regulation

The presentations by street vendors on the problems of regulation of public space showed that while inc-lusive policy-making involving street vendors as stakeholders is important, without implementation its benefits are not felt. The failure to manage permit systems and markets and the problems and vulnerabilities this creates was raised by Elvis Chishala, president of Alliance of Zambia Informal Economy Associations (AZIEA) and Luciana Itikawa a researcher from University of Sao Paulo.

Chishala recounted the ongoing struggle with municipalities who charge high levies but deliver no infrastructure or services. The state holds the right to manage markets and 'fast track courts' have been started to prosecute street vendors who are arrested.

AZIEA has been involved in protests against unjust removals and arbitary levy increases and been successful in lobbying government for dialogue on change and badly needed law reform. This lead to a policy review process in which market and street vendors are represented as stakeholders but he said there is a need for ongoing vigilance to ensure the fundamental rights of street and market traders are not eclipsed by business and local government.

Black market trade in public space

Itikawa painted a picture of Sao Paolo in which layers of informality exist. She revealed how the city's regulation falls short in meeting the needs of the street and market vendors, leading instead to a twilight zone that thrives on bribery and corruption and 'black market' regulation of public space.

Her research counted the bribes taken block by block in the city centre, where 90% of informal traders do not have official permits. Itikawa’s maps showed that there are 945 official permits issued in downtown Sao Paulo, where in reality there are 10-15 000 street traders.

The vulnerabilities that result from the artificially low number of official permits means that a spot in a public space costs 10 times more than private space and is 30 times more than the annual licence paid to the municipality. On the policy side, MEC for Local Government, Housing and Traditional Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Mike Mabuyakhulu said there has been a call to close the gap between what has been called the first and second economy in South Africa and what was also described as the formal and informal economies, through redistributive policies. David Genegan speaking for the Msunduzi Muncipality (capital city of KwaZulu-Natal) said an Informal Trade Task Team which includes street traders faces several challenges in management of trading spaces.

In some areas congestion of street traders poses a problem for traffic and in some places pavements are too narrow to accommodate street trading. Other streets that are more suitable for street trading are underutilised because there are too few pedestrians.

Genegan said growth strategies have set goals to support informal activity and income generation, however, the by-laws and national policy need to be reviewed. He reported that interventions to create and build opportunities for street and market vendors by the city involved capital investment (street furniture and off-street markets), public/private partnerships to improve areas and education and training programmes. Paul Williamson, reported on the City of Cape Town's Informal Trading Policy and Management Framework which is being developed and said the old by-laws were redundant.

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