MDC says brutalising of vendors must stop

The Movement for Democratic Change had called on the government to stop brutalising vendors saying this is not the solution to the problems bedeviling Harare and the nation.

In a statement following running battles between the police and vendors mainly in the capital Harare to clean up the city following the outbreak of cholera which has so far claimed 32 lives, the MDC said the government was using cholera as an excuse to victimise people in an attempt to achieve ill-conceived goals.

The party said the state apparatus was confiscating clothes and electronic gadgets from vendors, merchandise which it said cannot in any scientific way transmit cholera.

The MDC also accused the government and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front of crippling the operations of local authorities.

It said the central government owed lower tiers of government $1.2 billion while ZANU-PF owed the City of Harare more than $11 million.

Below is the full MDC statement

Brutalising vendors must stop

22 September 2018

The Zanu PF government’s obsession and decision to evict vendors from the city centre is barbaric contemptuous and disrespectful. It is not the solution to the problems bedeviling the city and the nation at large.

Government is simply using cholera as an excuse to victimize people in an attempt to achieve ill-conceived goals.

The MDC is against the idea of blaming the victims for every calamity that befalls the motherland.

To make matters worse the apparatus deployed to enforce the Zanu PF decision are confiscating clothes and electronic gadgets from vendors, merchandise that cannot in any scientific way transmit cholera.

These are clear acts of theft.

In an attempt to curb the spread of cholera emphasis must never be on the blame game apportioned to the vendors. Burst sewer pipes in Glen View are the source of the current outbreak which therefore must follow that the whole infrastructure of water and sanitation be overhauled and renewed.

We make this point in the Sustainable Modernization Agenda for Real Transformation (SMART).

Surveys have been done and commissioned to this effect including one by UNICEF which made it clear that government ought to have replaced the infrastructure in the 1990s.  However the Zanu PF government never prioritized and is against resourcing local authorities for purposes of capital formation as a result of their fear of an MDC success.

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