Maputo: Retailers moved from Zimpeto to Matendene market – Watch

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Maputo: Retailers moved from Zimpeto to Matendene market – Watch

3:04 CAT | 21 Jul 2020

Photo: Miramar

A start was made on Monday moving just over 400 retailers from the Zimpeto wholesale market in Maputo to new stalls at the Matendene market.

Some traders were worried they would not get a space, while others feared that the new location would not attract customers.

O País has been reporting how the operation was being carried out.

Lists of retailers preparing to leave the Zimpeto wholesale market were being prepared, while vendors lined up to ensure that their names were on the list and that they would not miss out – without observing any degree of social distancing.

Some were just waiting, despite having doubts about the transparency of the process.

“We don’t know what will happen, but we are suffering because we are not selling. We do not know what business will be like in another market,” Maria Francisco, one of the vendors slated for transfer, said. She had no guarantee of getting a stall in Matendene market, because her name was “not on the list, and that is why I am desperate”.

Also still unknown is whether in the Matendene market will provide conditions for business to run as desired.

“We hope that customers will show up at Matendene market to buy the products, so we can earn enough to buy bread for our children,” another Zimpeto wholesale market vendor, Isabel Cumbane, said.

“We are not refusing to go to Matendene,” vendor Helena Moiane said, “but other people are going to continue to operate here, while we don’t know whether customers will go to Matendene. We all want stalls, but this issue has to be taken care of”.

Opened in 2005, the Matendene Municipal Market has never seen all its stalls occupied, for the usual reason: there are no buyers.

“We are seeing salespeople disappear and go informal, and the market is almost empty,” because of a supposed lack of customers, head of the Matendene market sales committee Issufo says. But he says “this is not true, because, where there is one customer, another comes, and so a market is created”.

Even with the difficulty of keeping sellers in the market, the Matendene Vendors’ Commission says that conditions exist for accommodating over 400 retailers from Zimpeto.

“We have not yet sorted out exactly how many stalls we have, because we have been giving stalls to some people who have since left,” Issufo says.

The removal of vendors from Zimpeto comes within the scope of the reorganisation of markets to counter the spread of Covid-19.