VENDORS Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation (Viset) recently met with officials from the department of employment creation under the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare ministry.
The delegation from the ministry was led by the deputy director research and economic affairs Sam Hobwani and Dereck Nhema, an officer in the same department, while Samuel Wadzai represented the Viset team.
Hobwani said his department recently activated an exercise to gather statistics on the number of people employed in the informal economy. They want to partner Viset, given the organisation’s vast informal economy networks and membership, to undertake a process of disaggregating players/workers in the sector by age, sex, disability, nature of business and education level.
Hobwani said they had seen it fit to reach out to Viset in this exercise given the mobilisation ability they had witnessed during the formalisation strategy public hearings held countrywide last year. He revealed that the exercise would better inform government policy interventions that are evidence-based.
Wadzai welcomed the visit by the department and expressed appreciation for their faith in the organisation. He pledged to avail the membership records for the exercise, co-ordinate social-economic champions countrywide for more statistics, as well as for any other information that the department might deem necessary. Wadzai also pledged to coordinate other informal economy organisations to assist in the exercise.
In conclusion, Nhema committed to holding monthly engagements together with representatives from other departments in the ministry in order to exchange notes on developments within the informal economy ecosystem. - Social and Economic Transformation