By Patience Radisoeng
As hawkers continuously face many difficulties such as working on bad weather, being on the run due to constant harassment, and seizure of goods by councils, Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) saw it fit to do a competition for them to reap something and make their businesses grow.
The BTC Hawkers Challenge, as it is named; gives all its airtime hawkers to increase their airtime sales by 30 percent and the hawker who meets or exceeds target will be rewarded with a trailer and P5 000 worth of airtime to continue selling airtime.
“The dynamics of it is that, we made it in a way that each individual compete by themselves, we need our hawkers to grow their sales month on month by the minimum of 30 percent or above with whatever percentage as to qualify for the challenge but the highest grower get to win,” said BTC Indirect Sales Manager, Ephraim Tlogelang.
He gave example that if this month one sold airtime worth P100 next month he or she has to sell airtime worth P130 as to be suitable for the competition.
Adding that after they look into their systems to see how the hawkers have performed, they do what is called draw to award the winners.
Tlogelang mentioned that the value chain of airtime as well made them to do this competition, as they have dealers, sub dealers and runners which are the hawkers and if one look at the beneficial structure, the hawkers benefit least yet they do the distribution of the airtime most.
Meanwhile the first Hawkers Challenge trailer has been won by Amogelang Daniel from Thamaga who has grown her sales to 163 percent, all in all being 263 percent as BTC compare the months.
In her comment, Daniel said, “you could just see from the expression on my face, I feel like I entered into a dream state when I look back on the memory. All the work from the past couple of months, the entire effort just peak to this one point but most importantly I thank the BTC Company for the opportunity.”
However the competition started last year, Tlogelang said it was though on a low scale and they wanted to see how it will perform, so this year they revamped as they started it on the 15th of October 2018 and it is going to end on the 15th of April this year as there are still four trailers to be given away.
“This challenge will be a yearly thing and we are hoping to keep it for the next 5 years or so and obviously we will keep on changing the dynamics but with knowledge that we are doing it for the hawkers,” he said.
Lastly he noted that when they started in October, they had about 37 000 hawkers enrolled and now have grown to probably 42 000 nationwide as when they do road trips more people show interest and enroll.
