Tanzania MPs oppose clean-up Saturdays

Members of parliament in Tanzania have asked the government to end the rule requiring shopkeepers to delay opening on Saturday mornings once a month to get people to clean up the streets, privately owned media ITV reports.

Shops are only allowed to open at 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT) on the clean-up days, but very few people get involved in the tidy up.

The MPs said that forcing the shops to stay shut for four hours from dawn means that business people lose money and the government misses out on tax revenue.

“When you close the business for four hours, how much income have you lost?… Customers or business people want to travel at that time and they fail to get the service they need,” MP Musa Mbaruku is quoted as saying.

The clean-up rule was introduced three years ago.

Source: bbc.com