GEP-Germiston met with Mr Mnguni, the president of the Greater Thembisa Chamber on possible collaboration to assist small enterprises within the Chamber. His biggest concern was that GEP does not appear to reach out to needy entrepreneurs in Townships, and that they as Chambers are inundated with complaints from their members that GEP does not assists. A process was explained to him, and what role the Chamber could play to assist their members through the process of application. The issue of compliance was raised as the biggest for small enterprises. He committed to ensure to work with GEP to ensure qualifying entrepreneurs within the Chambers are assisted. Shortly after the engagement, GEP started receiving applications directed by Mr Mnguni from the Chamber, amongst those were Informal Traders.
GEP Intervention Offered
Informal Traders Grant is one of the popular offerings by GEP to informal business. This grant was initiated seeing the dire need of the Informal Traders who could not be assisted in any way by any DFI due to non-compliance, yet these businesses tend to be very resilient with some having been operating for years sustaining families. Through this grant funding, Informal Traders are boosted with stock and even trading aids such a cooler boxes and smaller utensils to improve their trading conditions.
GEP Team committed to attend to the Informal Traders swiftly as these were a sizeable number from the Greater Thembisa Chamber. A Total of 19 Informal Traders were assisted with stock and some small trading aids to the value of R 5 000 each.
Mr Mnguni was directly involved as the Team would report to him directly on challenges they faced. In this way he got to appreciate the struggles that GEP officials sometimes contend with dealing with small enterprises.
A Token of Appreciation
After the project was successfully completed, Mr Mnguni felt compelled to demonstrate the Chamber’s appreciation of the GEP Team’s effort is a special way. He delivered unannounced to GEP-Germiston offices a Certificate of Appreciation, as well as some refreshments for the Team.
