Harare targets malls in shop licence blitz

HARARE City Council is cracking down on businesses operating under the guise of shopping malls to avoid paying individual shop licences, Mayor Jacob Mafume has said.

Mayor Mafume dismissed many of these so-called malls in the Central Business District as mere partitioned shops that should be paying separate business licences rather than benefiting from a loophole in city regulations.

“The issue of what they call malls, frankly speaking, does not fit the definition of what we understand as malls, either locally or internationally,” he said.

“Someone just partitions their shop, names it after their grandmother, and suddenly claims it’s a mall.”

Mayor Mafume said true shopping malls such as Sam Levy’s Village and Westgate Mall are large commercial complexes with unified ownership structures and common facilities.

“When you subdivide your shop and put in multiple smaller shops within it, you have not necessarily created a mall,” he said.

“You have simply created several businesses that should be paying licences to the city as individual shops.”

Mayor Mafume said some business owners were using the term “mall” as a trick to dodge paying the necessary licensing fees for each shop operating within their building.

“The idea of calling it a mall is simply an attempt to evade paying for each business. There is no common ownership; various tenants are operating separately, and they must be licensed accordingly,” he said.

Mayor Mafume said the recently approved city budget has introduced a new licensing system based on floor size to ensure fairness, as previously, all businesses regardless of size paid the same licensing fee.

“In the old days, we used to have a one-size-fits-all licence. A supermarket and a small shop would pay the same fee. But in the new budget, we have created clusters based on floor size. Each shop must now pay a fee that matches its actual business space.”

Apart from financial concerns, Mayor Mafume noted the impact of these unregulated malls on city planning and cleanliness, saying the mushrooming of partitioned shops has led to increased litter, pollution, and congestion in commercial areas.

“These set-ups create more traffic, more litter, and more pollution. We need to ensure that each business of this nature has proper waste disposal facilities and is not littering the city,” he said. The Herald