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The phrase ‘of nickels, dimes and pennies’ sounds
like an antonym or some kind of a country music
title or a verse. These are simply metallic
denominations having varying money values. In the
Ethiopian context the coins range from one, five,
10, 25 and 50 cents, although a one-cent coin is
often found in the banks but rare in the market.
These days, banks seem to be running out of coins
judging by the limits of the amount of coins they
provide for their customers who market the nickels
or dimes at high rates of commission that reaches
20pc at one go. Even the World Bank should envy this
simple way of making money. I have a hunch that
depositors in this country earn only four per cent a
year while a coin vendor makes a 20pc profit in
matters of minutes if not seconds.
Coins are in high demand, particularly in the taxi
service circle. The other day I saw the assistant of
a minibus giving priority of boarding only to those
passengers who were carrying denominations. That is
indeed a special privilege that saves time and
shoving from travellers that have no manners.
The coin shortage problem is not confined to the
taxi transport circle only. It has transcended to
other business areas including cafés and bordellos.
The other day I was at a small café run by Ethiopian
Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) pensioners,
some of whom were once serving the Corporation as
coin collectors. What a historic irony to find coin
collectors short of coins I said to myself.
A computer-written notice posted at the Pensioners’
Association café courteously requests its regulars
to cooperate with the management in minding changes.
The term “change” incidentally, rings a bell as it
is gaining political currency in the Barrack Obama
Democratic camp vis-ŕ-vis Hilary Clinton who tries
to bank on her experiences for the next year
presidential election for the White House.
Politics aside, the demand for coin changes around
the telecommunication services is increasingly
becoming a serious problem to reckon with. There
were times when vandals did away with apparatus
boxes to quench their desires for the jingling
nickels and dimes so to speak.
The officials of the Corporation, however, turned to
be smarter. They have forged partnership with coin
vendors who avail themselves at the coin-box booths
as a duty running their business while keeping watch
over the gadgets. They have authorised identity
cards and get as much change as they would like to
have from the branch offices. They rightly consider
the apparatus as a lactating cow that gives them
their daily milk. The mutual arrangement seems to
benefit both parties.
Why coins are in short supply these days is not
difficult to explain. The main reason is the growth
in demand. The population is increasing at an
alarming rate. Monetised transactions are growing by
leaps and bounds following the opening-up of the
country due to the expansion of infrastructure.
Coins are also demanded for their technical values
of establishing telephone connections or enabling
coin-operated machines to function. In earlier times
coins were hoarded by silver or goldsmiths for their
intrinsic values. Jewelleries were made out of the
metals thus affecting their circulation albeit to a
minor extent.
Taxi drivers and passengers alike in the capital are
the most vulnerable to bear the brunt of the
shortage of coins. More often than not many people
tend to go around with paper money in their wallets
instead of loading their pockets with jingling and
heavy metallic pennies that would wear and tear
their pockets over the long run.
The ever-fluctuating rates for short as well as long
shuttles make both drivers and passengers
vulnerable. Sometimes the rounding up of figures to
the nearest unit adversely affects one or the other.
There are also times when some travellers dig out
and pull a 50 or a 100 Br note to pay the bill of a
70-cents distance. Some passengers insist that the
taxi people ought to have change for all types of
notes if they live by the books.
The woyallas (taxi callers), on the other
hand, argue that it is the passengers that should
carry denominations especially in the early hours of
the day when the taxis have not yet shuttled long
enough to accumulate sufficient coins. In many cases
the inevitable rift between woyallas and
passengers develops into a row that calls for
conflict resolution is it in the form of physical or
legal arbitration in which case passengers are
sometimes involved.
The taxi assistants know better. They buy coins from
vendors or beggars at exorbitant rates. One Br sells
at 80pc of its face value. Of course the coin
vendors have mouths to feed and families to support.
They also run all sorts of small business along side
their vending of nickels and dimes. They shine
shoes, sell, rolls of loose toilet papers, twigs of
toothpicks and sweets. Some even run one-apparatus
telephone call centres where they also lease smart
cards on commission.
Coin vendors, sometimes called mobile banks, are not
stationed only at telephone booth sites. They are
also conveniently present at squares and cross roads
where passing taxis buy coins. The swapping act is
swift and performed even while the vehicle still
moves albeit at low gear.
There is mutual trust in the business. The
woyalla protrudes his neck through the window
and rolls out the paper money without even pausing
to count the coins which he receives on air in
exchange. The begging community is also one of the
beneficiaries in the business of vending coins on
commission. One finds it difficult to cluster them
as traders or beggars. Shall we call them “vendo-beggars”?
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