Watch: Refurbishment of Museu market includes a hotel, project starts this week – Mozambique

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Watch: Refurbishment of Museu market includes a hotel, project starts this week – Mozambique

4:35 CAT | 14 Nov 2016

MMO (File photo) / Museu market

Museu market stallholders in Maputo City are expecting to move to temporary premises this week in order to let the building of a new market get underway.

At the moment, Museu market, located in one of the capital’s grandest quarters, lacks fencing and a drainage system, and has deficient roofing and a clutter of huts in the midst of which many people eat meals and even spend their leisure time.

Sellers are aware of the condition of the market, but it in no way deters their activities. “It fills with water when it rains. We take it out in any container available and dump it on the road,” vendor Milagrina Virgílio told O País.

Elisa Mahandzula, who has been working in the market for more than 20 years, complains of thefts due to the lack of fencing. “They rob us. Thieves come at night and take our belongings, because there is no wall,” she complains – an unhappy scenario soon to draw to an end with the impending reconstruction.

The Municipality of Maputo, which is heading the project, says that there was a public tender for the refurbishment of the market, and the selected company is financing the project. Temporarily re-housing vendors in the Rua dos Lusíadas in front of the current location will cost close to US$200,000 dollars, and the reconstruction of the market approximately US$2 million, reports O País.

“We are going to close the strip near the market (in Rua dos Lusíadas) and build temporary stalls there so that the activity can take place in an orderly way,” explains municipal councillor for Economic Activities and Markets, João Munguambe, adding that the same investor is to build a hotel in the Rua dos Lusíadas later.

The People’s Market [Mercado do Povo], also in the centre of Maputo City, is another facility on the list of those due for rehabilitation, but the municipality has not yet found a funder for the project. João Munguambe explained that the City Council would have to allow the company undertaking the refurbishment of the market some income or profit from the project.

“In this case the terrain allows the construction of a two or three-storey building in the part which is the most far away from Rua dos Lusiadas, at Avenida Martires da Machava, where all the market activity will be concentrated, and in the part of the plot in the Rua dos Lusidadas, a real estate project which we think will be a hotel will be implemented,” he explained.