About booths and street vending
By Dr. Lubinda Haabazoka
It’s very true that the booths look very ugly in town and in most cases don’t have supporting infrastructure like toilets.
It’s also very true that a lot of people depend on those booths for a livelihood. Booths are businesses for Zambians and employ locals. Booths also have helped increase financial literacy. Without booths, a lot of people are leaving without meals.
But this is where I emphasise that as a country we need to employ proper planning and take into consideration aesthetics in town planning.
We knew that there was going to be a summit and we knew that we had to beautify our city. So why did we leave it to the last minute? Each citizen counts. Whether rich or poor, black or white, Muntu or somebody.
So my advice is as follows:
Local authorities in conjunction with mobile phone companies and financial institutions should call for a competition where Zambians will be asked to design booths that will add beauty to the city and blend in with existing infrastructure.
Various designs shortlisted should be put to vote by Zambians online so that people participate in the process. The winning design then should be fabricated in Zambia after a prototype has been designed and produced, this will create instant jobs nationwide and also put at peace those that are affected.
So the money being given to youths under CDF can go to welders and other groups that will be involved in making these tuntembas. Ideally they can be made somewhere in a factor but assembled in various constituencies. They can be shipped as modules so that as many youths are employed in the assembling and mounting.
The new tuntembas can be developed with an eco friendly bias and fee paying toilets built within a kilometre space. Currently if you are not near a mall, the bush is the only solution for answer nature’s call.
Colleagues this is the kind of discourse I expected from a country that seeks development. No solutions so far offered by everyone to create a win win situation: councils happy and booth operators happy!
From this problem, we can sort out even the youth unemployment levels if we had to follow my approach.
We remain available for advice…
Thanks ba Zambia