Mopani Mayor urges banks to support street vendors
Mopani Mayor Pule Shayi has called on banks to provide card machines to street vendors to boost local trade and reduce crime risks.
LIMPOPO – “If the banks care about our people, they should be able to make card machines accessible to our street vendors,” said Mopani Mayor Pule Shayi.
The mayor was speaking in Jim village in Giyani during a recent district mayoral imbizo, where he outlined the district’s performance since the start of the new financial year in July.
“It cannot be that when I want to buy something here, from someone selling on the street, I first have to get a taxi to town to withdraw cash for a R120 item, whereas I could buy it locally if there were a card machine to facilitate the transaction,” he said.
He urged banks to make card machines easily accessible to every street trader so that people would not have to travel to towns to withdraw money to buy goods they could easily purchase from their villages if card machines were available to facilitate transactions.
“This is because once you go and queue in town, criminals know that you have money and therefore come up with all sorts of ways to rob you. But if you had card machines where you live, you would see that money would start rotating within the community,” he said.
Shayi said that making money circulate within a particular community helps fight poverty since it creates self-sustainable, allowing people to trade with each other without needing to go outside their areas. According to him, it doesn’t take a lot to see that happen.
“A hundred rand alone is enough to make an impact,” he explained.
“If one buys for R10 here, or pays off a R20 debt to someone they owe, and then the receiver uses it to buy something else here locally or pay another debt, it makes a huge economic difference since that money is rotating within a community,” he said, adding that this could only be possible if banks were willing to chip in and help vendors with subsidised card machines.
“We should be able to help our SMMEs in this way,” he said, citing the district’s support of pop-up markets as another method of uplifting small businesses.
“If we don’t promote these people, we will experience an increase in poverty in our society,” he warned.
