Mayor says no new booths will be located in Chisinau

The Mayor General of Chisinau says he will not allow the placement of new booths. “The booths will be gradually relocated,” Dorin Chirtoaca said at Monday’s meeting of the City Hall, demanding that all the booths with expired authorizations and the ones that had been located irregularly be immediately removed. According to Chirtoaca, the local authorities will comply with an earlier decision of the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) according to which all the booths located on the main streets must be taken away gradually when their authorizations expire. The booths from the secondary streets will be also removed. “We plan a future urban aspect of Chisinau that means something else than booths, including small shops. We have discussed this with economic agents and informed them that the economic developments will ultimately constrain them to change their areas of activity,” Chirtoaca said. The respective issue was raised by the deputy head of Buiucani district Alexandru Gorea, who said that most of the complaints coming from the Chisinau residents are about the placement of new booths. The deputy commissioner of Chisinau Iacob Gumenita said that during recent raids the municipal police counted 1,266 booths in Chisinau, 90 of which irregularly located. Of the 615 stalls checked, 129 had the authorizations expired or were set up near authorized stalls. Last July, CMC banned the placement of new booths in the historical center of the municipality and on the main streets of the capital. The newsstands are an exception. Also in July, the Council decided to ban the sale of cigarettes and drinks in newsstands and voted to ban the location of booths near schools and kindergartens.