Council issues Teo Ee Teh’s hawkers final notice to leave
Published on: Wednesday, January 04, 2023
By: Sidney Skinner
The agency’s licencing personnel checking on the goings-on at the stalls in October.
Hawkers, operating in the vicinity of the Teo Ee Teh complex in Tuaran, have one last chance to dismantle their stalls and relocate their businesses elsewhere.The District Council issued a final notice, asking them to vacate the common area near the commercial property, towards the end of December.
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A spokesman for the agency said this was the third such written instruction which had been given to the vendors last year, many of whom were bundle operators and masseurs.
He said the vendors had been notified to leave on February 28, 2022 and again on June 30.
“We will arrange to have their stalls demolished and bill them for the cost of this work, if they fail to comply,” he said.
“There will be no turning back this time. We tried the soft approach, with our officers repeatedly conveying our wishes for them to stop occupying this area over the past few years.
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“They have had ample opportunity to honour our request but, many of them are being hard headed.”
He said there were about 29 hawkers who had been resisting the Council’s instructions.
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“We offered to absorb them into our ‘tamu (weekly market)’ but they refused to set up their stalls here.
“Some of them even had the cheek to lobby us to be moved to a special site all their own but it is not as if we have any government land to our name to do this.”
He explained that the Council was merely adhering to a directive from the Ministry of Local Government and Housing for the hawkers to leave the area near the Teo Ee Teh complex.
“In 2021, the Ministry deemed the common area where the stalls were set up as being ‘tidak sesuai untuk aktiviti berniaga’ (unsuitable for doing business).
“We were informed of this in writing and told to revert this common area back to an open space.
“The Ministry’s letter was tabled at the Full Council meeting on November 29 that year during which time it was also decided that the vendors would be instructed to dismantle any structures which they had put up.”
The Ministry had been responding to queries from several proprietors at some shophouses adjacent to the stalls.
These shop-operators wanted to know how the hawkers could have been allowed to peddle their wares there.
They were made to understand that the area behind the building would be maintained as an open space when they bought their units.
This was according to the development plan approved by the Council at the time.
The group was unhappy about the poor upkeep of the structures, occupied by the vendors.
One of these shopkeepers said he had related these concerns to the local authorities on numerous occasions over the past few years.
Multiple letters had been sent to the Council and District Office about this, according to him, with the first of these missives dated September 2019.
When asked how the stalls came to be set up there in the first place, the spokesman said he could not recall as the decision to allow this was made “way before” the Council’s present administration.
“Our personnel were present during the site-inspection carried out in 2021 by the Ministry’s officers. They noted that the stalls did not look safe.
“They also remarked that the surrounding area was dirty and not being looked after properly.”
KHAN of Tuaran said the land behind the two-storey shophouses was designated as being an “kawasan lapang” (open space).
“This is according to the development plan I received in December 2001,” he said.
“I am at a loss to understand how the land could have been turned into a hawker area.”
He expressed his displeasure about the manner in which the stalls had been modified, with haphazard subdivisions made and fixtures protruding oddly from some walls.
“A stray spark from the wiring inside these ‘make-shift shops’ is all it will take to set these structures on fire,” he said.
He said this blaze could spread quickly to the shophouses, endangering the wellbeing of those living and working there.
Khan related his misgivings to the Council and was assured that it was taking steps to address his concerns.
“I was made to understand that the authority wrote to the hawkers several times last year.
“Despite being officially told to go, however, they are still operating from the area.
“I cannot fathom how the vendors are managing to get away with defying the Council?”
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