adminThe Herald, 8 September 1997
THE informal sector should be given recognition as a significant contributor to the national economy, the information sector training and resource network project director Mr Constantine Mutiwanyuka said on Thursday at the Namaco congress in Nyanga.
It was from the informal sector that the largest number of people working in any sector besides agriculture were employed.
More employment was created in a year by this sector than any and it could be entered by people with few resources and little education.
“A sector of the economy which addresses such a range of key development issues obviously needs to be encouraged,” said Mr Mutiwanyuka.
The informal businessperson, however, needed training to improve production skills and marketing.
Training someone as a carpenter and expecting them to become a business person was not good enough as they were likely to fall.
“The constraints facing informal sector business people are many and are often inter-related.
“They need to be addressed in an integrated way, as a development process rather than trying to fix one problem and find there are still a lot of other problems to fix.”
An attempt to address these issues has to be made by establishing a traditional apprenticeships such as Istarn.
This would directly create employment in informal sector business. Istarn is a bilateral project of the German and Zimbabwean government and is based at Masvingo Technical College under the auspices of the Ministry of Higher Education and Technology.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
As an idea mooted about 23 years ago, today the informal economy appears to be as important as ever to Zimbabwe and its future development. It remains the largest in terms of employment creation.
The introduction of the Small to Medium Enterprises Ministry in Zimbabwe has made it possible for the once informal sector to be formalised and appreciated.
Government has to make sure that everyone in this sector is registered and has their business formalised so as to help them access financial assistance as well as technical support.
An emphasis on job creation rather than job hunting should be put when training scholars at Higher and Tertiary education institutions.
Issues that could be given more prominence in policy-making are access to capital and the provision of relevant training. More important is what the formal economy can learn from the informal economy as a model for economic development.
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