Zambia National Marketeers Credit Association (ZANAMACA) has disclosed that about 95% of markets across the country are in dilapidated states a situation that has brought businesses opportunities down for most local traders and shop owners.
ZANAMACA president Mupila Kameya noted that Zambia has over 2, 800 markets across the country of which 95% of them are dilapidated. All these markets need rehabilitation to make them attractive as well as provide locals with self employment opportunities.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Kameya said the dilapidated state of the markets has affected them negatively as people with “big money to spend” avoid going into the local markets because the environment was not conducive.
Kameya called on the President-elect Hakainde Hichilema and his new government to focus on market infrastructure development once sworn into government.
“We want the new government to focus on infrastructure development, which is very key. Zambia has over 2800 markets across the country, which 95% are dilapidated and these structures have employed specifically about 5 million people of which, about 3.7 million are marketeers, and close to about 2million are small-scale farmers that bring produce to the markets.
“Now they bring these products to markets that do not have a conducive environment. That also affected our markets because those with big money could not come into markets because of cadres and the environment was not good. So we want to see better markets across the country going forward,” he said.
Kameya said the association would also like to see that all the business places, markets and trading places are free of politics and cadres because the economy in the informal sector was so much affect because of these illegal groupings collecting moneys from the people though out the country.
He said the local authorities across the country should take over the operations of these market places to maximize revenue collection. Kameya said the current situation where cadres were collecting money from the marketeers was hurting their businesses and many of them were losing out their hard-earned money.
“We want to see a situation where these cadres are removed from these places, we would like the local authorities across the country to work with us to ensure that our markets are safe.
What will happen is that if the local authorities run our markets and stations, they will collect enough revenue, create more income, which means that there will be more jobs because there will be no interference in these places and the local authorities will be empowered,” he said.
Kameya said the money in the informal sector is quite huge and the association was looking forward to country going back to normal where the local authorities are able to clean up the markets where they are collecting levies, because previously they were limping, as they could not collect enough money.
He further urged the new Government to directly work with the people in the informal sector to ensure that it resolved the challenges affecting the marketeers in the country.
“We want to see the dollar coming down, we want to see this government to concentrate on industrialization, and we must see industries flourishing in the country and we want our youths to find jobs when they graduate.
“You will see that when we industrialise the country, whatever we manufacture will be sold from here and at the end of the day we will start exporting like other countries and bring in forex,” Kameya added.
