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The machinga: Permanence is the buzzword
2006-09-24 09:48:59
By Editor
Some quarters have, cynically, branded petty traders machingas a tolerable evil. Tolerable, they say, because the traders enable some people to buy things some of them basic items that they would otherwise not bother to venture to purchase from conventional shops.
The mobile shopkeepers are furthermore credited with enabling customers to make purchases at, or close to their homes, thereby sparing them of transport costs.
Yet another factor of endearment to the machingas is their flexibility in reducing prices of their merchandise.
In the broad context, the machinga phenomenon is defended as an absorber of what could be social shocks, if the huge army of the young traders were not to have that opening as a means of livelihood, and therefore being driven into crime.
A fine line has to be drawn, however, between where the positive aspects of the phenomenon end and its ’’nuisance value’’ begins.
It is heartening that the government, and a big constituency of the public, acknowledges the importance of petty trading.
It is by extension also heartening, however, that the government also realises that if machinga trading is not regulated, it becomes a big nuisance, as it has been for quite a long period.
The machingas have been a big, nay gigantic nuisance through conducting business in unauthorised places. Pedestrians have had to endure inconveniences bred by wares spread out on shop pavements, street sidewalks, in the middle of streets, and on whatever open spaces they chance upon.
Particularly hurt are licensed shopkeepers whose front yards have been turned into merchandise display centres, thus compromising their revenue prospects.
The problem has been particularly conspicuous in urban centres, and more-so in Dar es Salaam due to its being the country’s leading metropolis.
We thus hail the move by the regional administration to direct that the machingas relocate to properly designated areas.
More importantly, however, we urge the authorities to keep at bay the cynical expression nguvu ya soda, which implies a culture of making decisions and moves, as well as taking action on beneficial issues but not sustaining them, and thereby relapsing to square one of a situation we fled from.
Permanence must therefore be the buzzword on the machinga relocation issue.
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