If anything, Mr. Speaker Sir, we have been reduced to a VAT economy where the Minister, I think dreams about which sector he should come up with in terms of the VAT. Of late it was the meat VAT but he rescinded on it to show that he is under pressure to raise money through VAT. We cannot be a VAT economy; we must be an economy that produces. You even want to VAT meat, what can you VAT, what value addition is on a cow? It is slaughtered. Fortunately, he rescinded on that after members of Parliament and I must say Hon. Zindi was one of them who brought the issue up.
So, there is absolutely no idea, no clue as to where the money is going to come from. I would like to support Hon. Chamisa’s point in terms of the fact that the state of the economy must be based on what is on the ground. Members of Parliament are underfunded; they cannot even get to their constituencies, it was not addressed. There are three pillars of the State, Parliament, the Legislature being one, representing people – has not been able to execute its duties; which mean whatever we have talked about here is not coming from a well informed view, and it is more of the social media that we are picking up. Instead of us being well funded, going back to the people and in terms of the Government policy which is there on the CDF which I think is critical for the Members of Parliament to be visible and to augment and support Government policy; that money is not there.
So, Members of Parliament who are supposed to represent people have not been able to represent the people through Government policy because if they are given a CDF, they are then able to complement Government’s effort. For example, if there is no borehole in an area, that CDF can be used to dig a borehole. By so doing, we are complementing Government effort, we have not been able to do that. So, I am equally disturbed by the failure or maybe the President was mis-informed about the performance of Parliament; it is non-performing. It is a worrying factor which has got to be considered if we are to move forward. We have the aspect of equitable distribution of wealth; the resources in Manicaland where there are diamonds are not found in Matabeleland South neither in Matabeleland North, yet all the people from both provinces are Zimbabweans. Why can they not benefit from the resources this country has? You have a situation where one province is richer than the other province, so when people move from one province to the other, they think they are getting they are getting into another country yet we are in one country.
The issue in terms of the resources being equitably distributed is something which I think has got to be revisited through the indigenisation Empowerment Act which empowers the resource in the community to then ensure that the people in that community benefit. The Community Ownership Trust, let us review what have they done to change the welfare of the people in these areas; absolutely nothing. There has not been accountability in terms of how these resources are done. Members of Parliament who are in these areas where there are so many resources cannot even benefit from them. The whole idea of having the chiefs to also be the custodians or to superintend over that, also has loopholes, is to do with capacity. They are dealing with the man and women who understand business. With due respect, I think we all have our roles to play and I am not saying the chiefs do not understand business but it is an aspect of comprehending issues – are they really representing people in the manner that they should?
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