Informal traders choosing business over inoculation

“I cannot afford to leave my vending place for a few hours to go and get vaccinated. Either someone will quickly replace me or I will not make enough money on the day to feed my children,” Sharon Kanyemba, said as she unwraps avocados on a piece of cloth on the ground at a lively market in Mbare.

“Anyway, I don’t think I need to be vaccinated. We have been out here in the streets for a long time to fear exposure to coronavirus. I haven’t seen anyone affected by the disease, we only hear about it in the news,” she added.

The 30-year-old mother of three is among the country’s 90 percent informal sector workers who are struggling to make ends meet since March last year, when the government announced a raft of measures, including national lockdowns, to control the spread of Covid-19.

While the police and local councils have been waging a crackdown on informal street vendors, criminalising their activities and tearing down their stalls for the past year, illegal vendors are finding new ways to continue with their trade despite threats of the deadly virus.

In the market, social distancing is pushed aside in the struggle to obtain more customers and very few people, if any, get time to visit inoculation centres.
“Things are tough. Almost daily, I have to part with US$1 for bribes to avoid getting arrested by the police officers,” Kanyemba said.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa launched the second phase of the country’s vaccination rollout on March 24, covering people with pre-existing conditions, the elderly and those confined to settlements and institutions, such as prisons and refugee camps.

The southern African country is targeting to vaccinate 10 million of its people, representing 60 percent of the country’s population, in an effort to achieve herd immunity — a situation where enough people have immunity, either from vaccination or past infection, to stop the uncontrolled spread of a virus.

However, according to the Reuters Covid-19 trackers, Zimbabwe has administered at least 640 762 doses of Covid-19 vaccines so far, translating to less than 2,2 percent of the total population.

Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations secretary general, Wisborn Malaya, told The Financial Gazette that the majority of informal traders have not been vaccinated yet due to lack of information on trending and important issues that concern them.

“They mostly need to trade so that they can feed families, nothing else matters to them. There is no direct awareness raising from our organisation, however, through the media our members have heard more or less about vaccination against Covid-19. Therefore, we recommend more mobile vaccine clinics so that some are not left out,” he said.

With limited formal employment opportunities, there has been escalation of self-employment with some citizens moving into vending and small businesses.
Now, the Covid-19 global pandemic has killed 1 576 people and infected 38 419 out of Zimbabwe’s 14 million population and sunk millions deeper into poverty in a country that was already in the throes of an economic crisis.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa

Malaya said it is significant that informal traders get vaccinated to enable the country to return to normalcy, as long periods of lockdown continue to impoverish millions of informal workers.

“Vaccination is very important for our members as our members work in public spaces, which are also very congested,” Malaya added.
He said this has been hard as almost half of the association’s female members survive on cross-border trading.
“Hunger within families, failure to send children to school, which widens the illiteracy rate, rental burdens and hospital bills have increased. But on a positive note, it has encouraged women to adapt to technology as they now do e-marketing,” he said.

Malaya said informal traders have not seen any significant support from the government though they asked for members’ databases.
A study by the Graca Machel Trust (GMT)`s Women’s Economic and Social Advancement reveals upcoming women entrepreneurs have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
GMT duly carried out a study titled “An analysis of the Covid-19 Response and Recovery Strategies in Select Countries in Africa Through a Gender Lens,” which was co-authored by Moira Ngaru and Cathrine Dzingire.

“Women in informal businesses have lost more than 50 percent of their income as social distancing guidelines drastically reduced the number of people visiting their markets,” Ngaru said, while presenting during the GMT National Association of Business Women Zimbabwe thematic dialogue held in the capital recently. “When crises strike, women and girls are hardest hit by economic impacts. Women generally earn less and save less, and are less able to absorb the economic shocks than men.

“Women are losing their livelihoods faster than men and have fewer alternatives to generate income. Crises also increase unpaid care work; school closures and social distancing measures have increased the unpaid care and domestic load of women at home,” she said. Despite the significant fall in annual inflation, prices of goods and services in the economy continue to rise marginally every month.

The cost of living as measured by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe’s (CCZ) monthly basket for a family of six increased to $35,703.41 in March 2021 from $35,543.30 in February. The food basket increased by $89,26 to $15,082.71 by the end of March 2021 from $14, 993.45 by the end of February 2021.
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