COVID-19: Authorities close Maputo markets to reorganize, sellers complain

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COVID-19: Authorities close Maputo markets to reorganize, sellers complain

3:52 CAT | 16 Jun 2020

Photo: Lusa

Alice Cecília, 60, has been selling clothes at the Xipamanine market for more than 30 years to support her family, but today, activities relating to Covid-19 are making her fear for the future of her small business.

With her small clothes stall practically outside her house, Dona Alice has provided for her eight children amidst the hustle and bustle of one of the Mozambican capital’s most famous markets.

But, within the scope of coronavirus preventative measures, the municipal council has decided to temporarily close all 63 markets in the Mozambican capital, and Xipamanine is the first.

Inside the market, Maputo Municipal Council personnel are indicating new spaces for the vendors, in order to guarantee social distancing. The market is expected to remain closed for three days.

“This business is the livelihood for my family, like many others here,” Dona Alice says, adding that the market predates the country’s independence in 1975 by at least five years.

“They have to give people other places, they can’t just stop them operating like this. They have to have space [in the market] to support their families. I have seven children, eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild, all of whom depend on this business.”

Like Alice Cecília, many traders went to the market yesterday, apprehensive at losing their livelihood. They were there from the early hours, despite the season’s cold mornings, congregating in groups under the watchful eye of the Police of the Republic of Mozambique, who were preventing people from entering.

“I am afraid of the coronavirus, but this disease is here to stay. Yes, I am afraid, but my children have nothing to eat,” another informal vendor, Neusa Gazito, says. She is a 33-year-old widow with four children, all dependent on her small stall in the middle of Xipamanine.

“Today I have nothing to cook because I depend on this here,” she says, in criticism of the temporary suspension of trading.

Head of the Xipamanine Informal Market Commission, Vasco Massingue, tells Lusa that the vendors are not being removed from their stalls. The municipality’s goal, Massingue underlies, is to safeguard the health of traders.

“We are only here to demarcate, in order to guarantee social distancing. There’s a pandemic in Mozambique, and people are always so crowded in the market. We are in fact going to expand the amount of space. We’re not to taking anyone away, we’re just re-organising,” Massingue explains.

But some of the 7,724 traders accounted for by the municipality in the Xipamanine market will have to go to other markets, Massingue says, in order for social distancing to work.

“We have been urging people every day to stay at their stalls, wear the mask, not sell products to people not wearing masks, not let their children go around the market selling water and other products,” he added.