By Neelam Rahim

Members of the property, investment and business sectors say a 24-hour work day in Johannesburg can unleash endless opportunities for efficiency, growth and employment in the city.

Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) responsible for finance, Julie Suddaby, hosted an engagement session on Monday (13 June), where businesses urged the city to re-imagine a 24-hour city to unlock opportunities.

The executives stated it can become feasible for Johannesburg to version different first-international towns consisting of New York, Buenos Aires or Tokyo, which gain considerably from a night-time economy. The citizens and travellers in those towns experience the twenty-four-hour cafés, supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, public shipping and different services.

Suddaby introduced that Johannesburg has a populace of approximately 6.2 million citizens – matching towns like New York, Hong Kong and London. However, in contrast to those towns, it has a much better unemployment charge that can partially be addressed via means of a middle-of-the-night economy, she stated.

“However, unlike these cities, it has a far higher unemployment rate which a night-time economy could partly address.”

“Johannesburg has an unemployment rate of 40% and the youth unemployment rate is a devastating 55%. Our poverty rate is 52% and only 71% of households have access to electricity”.

 Vuyiswa Ramokgopa, the chairperson of the National Property Practitioners Council, says, “Johannesburg has to work, we have no choice. It’s imperative for the government, business and stakeholders to realise the urgency to correct things.”

“We need to start to think about the multi-usage of buildings in the inner-city. We need to start to move to a 24-hour city. There are so many former industrial areas, with abandoned factory buildings. We need to start thinking on how we can re-use them.”