This week's market story is about
Gezaloule market. This is a small market in the suburbs of Dar Es Salaam.
The market is the local “shopping mall” for the community and it
sells everything from dish-ware and furniture to meat,
vegetables and cooked food (As a side note its famed in our office
for having very good and cheap second-hand clothing).
The food vendors in the market had an
ongoing problem with garbage. People in the market were dumping all the garbage behind where the food vendors were working. The women
were very concerned because of the health problems created by the
garbage dump and also because the terrible smell was negatively impacting their
business (after all who wants to eat when they smell rotting garbage?)
EfG started a women's association in the market place this January and garbage was one of the first issues the women decided to tackle. EfG worked with them to help create an advocacy strategy and the group wrote and spoke to the
municipal official in charge of the market. After these conversations,
the municipal officer agreed to send someone to clean-up the dump and
also to arrange for regular garbage pick-up. Last week a team went
out and its definitely improving (see pic bellow).
This is part of a larger struggle on the part of EfG and market women traders to
have adequate resources allocated to market maintenance and
improvements. All the market traders pay taxes to the municipal
government and 10% is suppose to go back into market maintenance but
that rarely happens. In fact, no one is exactly sure where all this money ends up. These women are taking the first steps to demand
accountability from their local government.
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