16 Jun 2014

The new market at the Gumare Bus Rank remains underutilised despite efforts to encourage informal traders to operate from there.

This is despite the hope that the completion of the state of the art Gumare bus rank brought to many especially informal traders. Many had big hopes to carry out their business at the rank to make ends meet and this infrastructure also led to the introduction of taxi cabs in Gumare.

The bus rank was built with a terminal building, which consisted of stalls (restaurants, tuck shops, offices and shops) that were allocated to traders through a bidding system.

Those that won the tender were given the offer letters to start trading in November 2013 and pay monthly rent. Later on, the traders started complaining to the Okavango Sub-district Council about the rent amount.

In an interview, the senior assistant council secretary , Mr Onthatile Molelu said they had received complaints about the rent charges. But in response to the complaints, he said they had a task team to do a research on the profits made by traders at the bus rank.

He said because this bus rank was the  first of its kind, they did not know about the charging system and they consulted the Ministry of Lands and Housing for guidance and that is where they got their previous charges from.

Mr Molelu said because they were interested in uplifting the residents, they decided to reduce the rent charges from P55 per square metre to P20 per square meter. He said they decided to write off all the arrears that the traders owed before the rent slash.

However , the traders have claimed ignorance over the claims by the official. They were still waiting for the response from the council, and some said they were still paying the previous charges.

Traders claimed that there is no profit at all to an extent that some stalls only opened for a few days and closed afterwards.

Furthermore, the traders said there are not many people who buy from them, complaining that may be it is because the bus rank is in the outskirts of the village and the only traffic of people in the bus rank are the ones on transit.

They argued that the buses do not stop for a long time in the rank for the passengers to have time to get off the bus to go and buy.

Mr Molelu said Gumare is a very developed village, so the location of the bus rank was influenced by that and all the reason that they were trying to reduce traffic into the village. He advised the traders to go back to the drawing board and try to change the products they are selling.

Meanwhile, taxi drivers also complained that residents are not using their services fully, as some prefer to walk than get a taxi to the village. ENDS