With two days left before the closing date of spaza shop registration, Gauteng finance and economic development MEC Lebogang Maile has revealed that 4,521 people have already submitted their forms and 2 605 of them are foreign nationals.
According to Maile, 3,616 people collected application forms, and 2,605 traders who submitted are foreign nationals.
He said 1,916 other people submitted incomplete forms. However, Maile did not disclose the number of locals who submitted their forms.
“I think there are more than 2,000 or so foreign nationals and all that. Remember, those are registrations, the applications have not yet been accepted. So you will only know once they’ve been accepted how many have applied. You will be able to get those numbers after the deadline,” he said.
“At present, 2,605 applications have been submitted by non-South African spaza shop owners, based on data from the City of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, West Rand district and Sedibeng district municipalities,” said Maile.
According to Maile, 541 spaza shops have been closed for non-compliance. He said other issues of non-compliance include a lack of certificates of acceptability or businesses operating from unsafe premises and within a hazardous environment, resulting in their closure.
Maile said they were confident they would receive more applications by Thursday.
“So we’re confident we will get a decent number, because as you can see, we’ve already reached out to about 15,000 spaza shops, and more than 13,000 of them have received forms. And we’re hopeful all of them will submit by the deadline, and that more people will also respond,” he said.
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