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News24 reports that in a bid to pay off his student debt, 25-year-old Isaac Mpofu has started a chair renting business outside the Home Affairs offices in Bellville, Cape Town.
He is now looking to expand to other government departments where people queue for hours. Mpofu, who completed his BCom Financial Accounting degree last year, is desperately trying to pay off his outstanding debt so he can obtain his qualification, which has been withheld due to outstanding student debt. He had to think of a way to earn a living, because he is qualified but unemployed. "In January, I first noticed the very long queues outside the Labour Department in Bellville and decided to approach some customers to rent out chairs from me at R5 for two hours or until they get inside the building," said Mpofu. To his surprise many customers took him up on his offer, eagerly agreeing to pay R5 for two hours. The elderly and those with disabilities could sit free of charge. After a week of renting chairs outside the department in Bellville, someone told him about the queues outside of the Department of Home Affairs in Bellville, which were apparently much longer than the ones at the labour department. With some of the money that he's made, he was able to buy more chairs and now rents out a total of 60 chairs per day. "After each chair gets used, I sanitise the chairs, the customers' hands and ask them to please keep a distance between them," Mpofu stressed. He stores his chairs in a storage room at a nearby shop where he pays R200 a week to keep them safe.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Lisalee Solomons at News24
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