Market Day 19 August 2022.
UMTATA HIGH SCHOOL MARKET DAY
Poverty Eradication :
Start A Business.
Umtata High Commerce Department has always been seized with social ills in our community. The challenges facing the youth and contracting economic growth has resulted in many struggling to make the ends meet. This has caused the spiral in unemployment and criminal activities which are the major social ills facing our society.
Taking note of the challenges facing our youth and society today, Umtata High School has embarked into decisive programmes to equip its learners for the future. This has resulted in the Market Day 2022 to focus on running a business.
Learners were requested to draft a business plan. The business plan is then submitted to the senior commerce learners who check compliance by all prospective businesses. Learners could register their business as a sole trader, partnership or a company. A sole trader is applicable to one learner, partnership to two to three learners and a company to the learners above three but not more than six in that group.
Once compliance is met then a company is then registered in the commerce department and has to pay either R10 for sole trader, R20 for Partnership and R30 for a company .Immediately after payment all companies were issued with a permit which represented a Certificate of Incorporation for it to operate on the Market Day.
This year we managed to register Twenty different entities who operated on the Market Day. The business used different marketing strategies to ensure all their products will be sold on the day. The items transacted on the day include Tshisa Nyamas, Cake my day, SA foods, Panel Bakery, Play Stations, Movies, Target Shooting, Table Tennis among others.
We were overwhelmed to see queues and first come first services operations on the day. Shelves were well decorated and full but were all cleaned. Directors of the business had all smiles as they pocketed their positive retained income for the day. Companies were then requested to pay 5 % of their sales to the department as a form of taxation to SARS. This was well supported by many businesses. All the businesses were assessed as to whether they comply with operating requirements. The business will each receive an audit opinion issued by the commerce department.
The audit report will assess the general efficiency in servicing clients, the internal controls to manage its stock, transparency in disclosure of its operations and payment of the 5 % as a SARS token to the department. The business that scores high in those parameters is then issued with an unqualified audit report. Businesses that struggle to be transparent and fail to contribute will then be issued with either a qualified, adverse or disclaimer audit report depending on the degree and nature of the situation.
This year most of the business complied with requirements and we are hoping for positive unqualified audit reports when they get released by the Commerce department.
The Commerce department expresses its gratitude to excellent team work exerted by all Umtata High School Staff which ensured the day went according to plan. We are looking forward to an excellent moment on the prize giving day to determine the best three companies in the GET and FET phase respectively.
I am certain all the lessons learnt on the day are definitely going to change business operations in our future generation.
COMMERCE DEPARTMENT
