27 Sep 2013

The future of doing business in villages beyond Mohembo river remains cloaked in meek shades as small business owners face a bleak moment of hunger in the face of scarce market and slow return on investment.

There are several villages dotted across the Mohembo river and access to them is only through a government owned pontoon. Efforts by residents across the river, to access empowerment programs such as economic diversification drive (EDD) are encountering serious challenges as they have to deal with high transport cost which escalates prices of most basic commodities.

Mrs Kelehithetse Maedze of Seronga, specializing in knitting is yet to enjoy EDD as she is still stuck with uniform stock she knitted some 10 years ago when she was to supply the then newly opened Gudigwa Primary school, only to learn later that uniform had been bought from other tailors.

“I was approached by one social worker to make 90 school uniforms in 2003 for pupils in Gudigwa, but to date nobody came back to me and the uniform is still here. I now sell to individual parents as and when they order,” she said.

She believes they should not be struggling because Seronga has primary and secondary schools that should ordinarily provide sufficient market for them.  “But now we don’t know what is wrong, we don’t get to see tender adverts and the two of us operating knitting business in Seronga have never won any tender for either of the schools.”
Curtailing growth of businesses here also are high transport costs as they travel as far as Maun, over 600kilometres to source material.“The roads here are not tarred and with no public transport private vehicles charge high fares and these escalate prices of our products, and because our clients here don’t know this, they believe we are expensive and don’t buy from us,” she said.

And because knitting is a labour intensive and skilled operation, it becomes cumbersome to import skilled labour in the absence of a ready market especially since local youth are not interested in knitting. “Nobody is telling us whether it is our quality or capacity that prevents us from supplying the two schools with uniform,” she said.

Another Seronga resident Ms Galetshajwe Sewelo said doing business in their part of the world is a serious challenge due to a dwindling market. “Business was good when I was operating from my house in 1997 because then I supplied Ngambao Secondary School until 2003 when they introduced tendering system which has since taken business from us. We are told the school buys bread from chain stores as far as Shakawe, about 100 kilometres from here despite availability of such service here,” a dejected Ms Sewelo said.

Passionate and upbeat about the role her business can play in the face of adversity, Ms Sewelo is ready to fight to enjoy preferential procurement put in place by government. The initiative mandates government institutions and organizations where government has a stake in to buy goods and services from small business within areas they operate in.

“EDD is still to benefit us because contrary to some believes, the two bakeries in the village have the capacity to supply all the schools in our village with required amounts of bread at any given time,” she confidently said.

The bottle necks in institutions for acquiring tenders are a nightmare to locals and are not understood by many business owners and residents see them as an impediment to the growth of their businesses. “As businesses here we can’t access tendering process because it is difficult to satisfy minimum requirements.

For example to get licensed and trade with government we are required to take our employees through medical exams to ascertain whether they are fit to work, but the medical testing equipment in Gumare is always non functional. And looking at the size of my market and returns this is also expensive because I part with P700 to and from Gumare for two employees going for medical exams,” she said.

As a way to stay competitive and see sustained growth business operators here want unconstrained access to trade with government institutions in their locality such schools, BDF camp or wildlife camps by selling either bread, uniform and farm produce.  ENDS