Tuesday,
January 15, 2013
There is an urgent need for a change
in local government policy that could make petty traders’ environment safer,
more humane, and more rewarding.
The Accra
Metropolitan Assembly may claim that it has constructed new places (Agbogbloshie,
Neoplan Station in Accra, etc.) and that the hawkers have no justification not
to use those places. They may claim also that the problem is caused by these
hawkers who have refused to relocate to those centres. I disagree with them
because those places aren’t conducive for these hawkers to settle in.
Apart
from the corrupt tendency of extort money from these hawkers in the allocation
of the stalls, there are also fundamental problems that repel these hawkers
from those trading centres. Apparently, lack of adequate facilities and other
factors such as distance have not encouraged these hawkers to relocate. More so
is the fact that the Accra Business District is where the actual business can
be profitably done. That is where the population of buyers converges.
Relocating
hawkers to remote corners of Accra won’t solve the problem because the
gravitational pull isn’t there to sustain their trade. Buyers will not travel
to those remote places to do business with them. Many other factors contribute
to this problem. Accra and Kumasi, particularly, are choked with residents who
have to mill over each other for little space to do business of any kind.
The road
network is horrible just as transportation is. Traffic snarls prevent swift
movement to-and-fro. Which buyer will waste precious time in this situation,
going to far-away markets in search of petty items? So, you see, the petty
traders will go where the buyers are easily accessible. And most of these
buyers are on the streets.
We are
even not talking about criminals who have taken over public space to harass
innocent people seeking simple means to solve their existential problems.
Good
governance demands that the authorities address the problems of these petty
traders in a more humane and business-oriented manner. One preliminary step is
to take measures to address the concerns of these petty traders by involving
them in decision making at all levels.
Meetings
should be initiated with their identifiable leaders (almost every group of
people in Ghana has an association with recognized leaders) and hobnobbing done
to determine what the concerns of these petty traders are and appropriate
measures taken to address them The executive officers of the Ghana Union Traders
Association (GUTA), for instance, could be co-opted into anything that will be
done to tackle the problems.
There is
need for a non-partisan approach. Solving the problems should be devoid of
partisan political inclinations. How difficult will it be for the Chief
Executive Officers of these Assemblies to work hand-in-hand with identifiable
public, quasi-public, and private business entities to find permanent solutions
to this problem of street hawking? I suppose the problem isn’t being solved
because of rigid antagonistic positions that all the stakeholders have taken,
which is counter-productive.
The exigencies of the Ghanaian
business environment demand that lasting long-term solutions be found for
street hawking. The reality is that as job openings in the public sector shrink
as against the exploding population of job seekers, the attraction toward petty
private business operations like street hawking will continue to be the order
of the day. As the education institutions continue to churn out products who
cannot be employed—because no one is creating jobs—we should expect street
hawking to be the norm.
No amount of promises from politicians will
solve the problem. Rather concrete action that accounts for the genuine desire
to provide amenities for the hawkers will do. The government cannot be relied
on to generate jobs for the jobless. We all know how glib-of-tongue these
politicians are and won’t rely on the to create jobs.
That is why private initiative
must be encouraged and supported with the provision of facilities to
accommodate the needs of the downtrodden who have chosen to hawk petty items
for survival. Since we don’t expect this downtrodden segment of our population
to continue being jobless and living below the poverty line, we must encourage
them to do things for themselves.
All the government (through the
local Assemblies) can do is to initiate projects to create the conducive
business environment. The rest can be left to the individual petty traders to
pick up from there. After all, we should rather be glad that these people haven’t
resigned themselves to fate or turned their human facilities into anti-social
vices. They have the sense to do something for survival. Why not support them
instead of taking draconian measures to cut short their initiative and implement
measures to dehumanize them and push them further into narrow circumstances?
Our local Assemblies must act
with urgency to help these petty traders establish themselves and grow in their
trades. The government will have less headache if these private traders grow
their businesses to absorb the unemployed who would otherwise have turned their
energies into doing anti-social acts such as armed robbery and prostitution.
Can our leaders think properly
for once to solve existing problems and not create new ones to worsen the
excruciating poverty that is stifling growth in our country?
I shall return…
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E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
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