Zimbabwe: Local NGO hands lifeline to informal women traders
By Admire Machiwenyika – Women’s Bureau a local Non-Governmental Organization is embarking on a 3-day training workshop to educate women in the informal sector on various issues affecting them when conducting their daily business.
On the side-lines of the workshop running under the theme ‘Information for women’s voices targeting women in the informal sector’, the Women’s Bureau director Ronika Mumbire unpacked the whole project.
“The project is called ‘Information for women’s voices’, it targets informal cross border traders and the main thrust is engaging stakeholders so that they can respond to issues of cross border traders, so there is need to link both sides. Traders need information of what is expected of them when conducting their business,” she revealed.
The NGO in working in collaboration with cocktail of stakeholders such as Zimra, Immigrations authorities, NSSA, ZRP and the City Council just to name the few to raise awareness of the law in place and what is expected from them by these authorities.
“The project covers a broad spectrum of stakeholders that include Zimra, Immigrations including NSSA and it is important to engage these stakeholders on issues of collection of taxes, so that the traders would understand what is expected of them from the authorities”.
“Other stakeholders include the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and the City Council and the traders need to know what is required and expected of them from the law enforcement as far as trading regulations is concerned,” explained Mumbire.
In an interview with some of the participants at the workshop they expressed disgruntlement over the conduct from the authorities from border posts and at the passport offices.
“We are finding it difficult to conduct our business freely and at the border posts we are being over charged by the border control, Zimra and the ZRP. We are even failing to access passports it’s been over a year now, they are demanding up to US$60 to be quickly processed,” said one of the participants.
