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People with disabilities ask government for capital fund
2007-10-03 08:49:50
By Amri Lugungulo, PST
Although the government has provided plots to disabled persons in the country to undertake petty trade, some have failed to run their businesses for lack of capital.
One disabled resident in Dar es Salaam, Jumanne Mkwepu, told PST recently that most of them had found it tough to run their businesses due to stiff competition from businesspeople with bigger capital.
He said as a result, most people with disabilities in the country, but particularly in Dar es Salaam, had either sold or rented their plots to other traders.
`It is not possible to compete with a person with 200 shirts when I have only ten in a kiosk because most of the customers will flock to the kiosk with a variety of choices that meet their desire,` he said.
Mkwepu, a visually impaired person residing at Mbagala in the city, requested the government to give them soft loans, besides plots, in order to empower them.
`The government should know that handicapped persons are different from other able-bodied people. They should be given special consideration,` he said.
However, Tanzania Association of Disabled Persons (CHAWATA) secretary general Palemon Rujwahula said people with disabilities were given business plots but sold them to other business people for reasons best known to themselves.
CHAWATA chairperson Audax Balthazar, on the other hand, lamented that most of his members had sold their business plots to able-bodied business people but continued to pretend that the kiosks still belonged to them.
He said, for instance, that about seventy per cent of businesses at Karume area in the city belonged to able-bodied people who bought them from people with disabilities.
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