daniel chigunwe
FOR the fourth time in seven years, the very large home industries complex at Glen View 8 in Harare has gone up in smoke and it now needs to be rebuilt better, following the same successful and sensible policy that has seen the old Mbare Musika being rebuilt as a proper traders’ market, again after a major fire.
In some ways, the Glen View complex is even more important, grouping small industrialists, little businesses that produce rather than just trading.
Many of the businesses are furniture makers, using carpentry and upholstery skills to make a wide range of furniture. These are people who need to be encouraged. The old complex was largely built up as a collection of shacks, mostly made of wood although cardboard of all things was sometimes a partitioning and wall-filling material. Even the vaguely related Magaba complex near Mbare at least has mostly metal and precast concrete walling.
There are good reasons why the small industries like to be grouped together, besides the access to electricity for power tools and other needs. Potential customers are attracted to such large groupings as they can see a wide range of products. If you want, for example, a new bed, you could go to Glen View 8 and see different designs, different materials, different pricing as a result and could make a decent choice or even have something made up to your own design or your own requested changes on an existing design.
For the same reason, many tailors and dressmakers congregate in several converted city centre office buildings, or for that matter metal workers crowd together at the Magaba Complex just north of Mbare.
This sort of grouping together is common in most cities around the world, especially when small workshops are involved and has been the case since the start of the industrial revolution.
It also allows suppliers of raw materials and services to be set up to supply the workshops, creating the sort of industrial complex that is required as the workshops move upscale into more sophisticated business as well as ensuring the viability of the basic businesses from the beginning.
There is a tendency to sneer at these little workshops as informal traders, yet attempts to formalise the sector require something in return, such as proper premises, which means safe premises, at affordable rents and perhaps some sensible marketing and production advice.
We need to remember we are dealing with people who have skills, even if these are not backed by bits of paper from a college and are prepared to work hard and invest their profits.
So we start with the basics all in place. What is now needed are safe premises. Building a proper workshops complex seems quite possible. It need not be dramatically expensive but walling needs to be masonry or at least precast concrete slabs, with proper fireproof roofing, probably metal sheets these days, safe electricity supply, water points, areas where products can be displayed for sale and the like.
The people of the home industry complex need to be involved, and need to be clear what sort of space they need and what services they require.
We would assume that they and an architect or designer could work together very successfully. This is important as rents will have to be charged, but these must be affordable and there must be a clear connection between what people can afford to pay and what sort of premises they can then have.
The complex will be, in some ways, like a large factory that has been sub-divided and so will have its fire protection. This is laid down in regulations and includes things like sprinkler lines over machine spaces and fire extinguishers of the correct type at set intervals.
Factory owners are rarely interested in luxury premises for their machinery, but they do want everything safe and protected from the weather.
So a lot of the basic design work for a proper small industry complex probably already exists with just suitable partitioning to be designed and put in place.
In some countries where there has been scrapping of large industrial space, former factory buildings have been successfully converted to modern workshops. We have seen a bit of this in Zimbabwe, but more commonly sensible owners of industrially-zoned land building the unit-style lines of workshops that are probably the next stage up for many of the Glen View businesses when they are a bit bigger.
As the business owners sift through the wreckage at Glen View 8 to see what can be salvaged they will need some help to become re-established and will need sets of decisions made quickly.
This was done at Mbare where a temporary open market was allowed, while the first stage of the final pair of complexes was quickly built and opened a few months later, with a far larger market now under construction.
The Mbare example also showed how effective a public-private partnership could be and how returns on investment could be spread so that rents were realistic, but affordable from the beginning.
The Mbare example also shows how easy it is, when proper safe buildings and the necessary security and services are in place, to convert even very small informal businesses into the bottom rung of formal businesses.
Formalisation is important, but for a tiny business it should not be a complicated process and certainly not an expensive process. It will need a licence and will need tax registration.
But as most small businesses are operated as sole traders little is needed in the registration field, and the taxes, at least at the beginning, will be very low as few will be earning much profit, especially when they have to invest in new machines.
Some of the businesses will be so small at first that their profits appear in the zero tax band and they pay nothing, but at least they will be listed against the day that they do grow.
This sort of simple licence and tax registration can be made even easier if proper advice was given at the new complex. The fire has been a major set back for the small industrial workshops at Glen View 8 Home Industry Complex, but if everyone moves swiftly, as was done at Mbare, it can be the foundation of a real business complex that allows growth and upgrades.
We just need to move fast, in cooperation with the business owners, to plot a decent future that rebuilds far better than what was there before.
Online Reporter