FOR months, vagrants along Broadway (Swapo) Road and Adelaide Thambo Drive have been terrorising local residents and retailers. The vagrants, who also pose as car guards, have also harassed and threatened several residents and visitors to the area.

Broadway Business Forum has taken a stance against the vagrants by providing uniformed staff to the area. The uniformed staff, who are made up of existing official car guards, have also been mandated with asking the vagrants to ‘move on’.

Candace Grondein of the forum explained that in the past, residents, retailers and customers had complained they felt threatened by the vagrants.

“They were in-your-face and extremely intimidating. In some cases, when people refused to give them tips, they would threaten them with physical violence. We decided, as the business forum, that something needed to be done. We felt that it was way too easy for vagrants to buy one of the bibs and pretend to be car guards. That is now a thing of the past. Anyone visiting the precinct will now know who the proper car guards are,” she said.

“Being such a high-profile banking node as well as a restaurant area, we decided not to have a bombastic approach to chasing unofficial car guards out the area. We know it is not really a crime and what we thought we’d do was officialise the real car guards by giving them proper uniforms with reflective bands, which helps at night, and this way the unofficial people would no longer find that their income was so readily forthcoming and hopefully start moving on,” she said.