Aspiring MP donates chicks to residents

Diana Nherera Suburban Reporter

Zanu PF candidate in the Harare East parliamentary by-election Cde Kiven Mutimbanyoka has hit the campaign trail and has rolled out empowerment projects for residents of Harare East.

On Wednesday he donated chicks under the Presidential empowerment scheme to members of his campaign team.

Cde Mutimbanyoka said the first batch of the 10 000 chicks from President Mnangagwa were for the campaign team before the programme is extended to residents of the constituency.

“This is an empowerment project which is a brainchild of the President.

“So the President is saying he wants to empower his people so he has given us 10 000 chicks.

“We are giving the first batch to our campaign team that will be on the ground.

“Later on we make sure that we empower our people (the rest of the residents).

“I made a request to His Excellency and as a listening President, he has acceded to our call for our people to be empowered.

“So this is what we have started doing,” he said.

Turning to his manifesto, Cde Mutimbanyoka said Harare East has numerous problems.

“And I got to know about all these problems because number one, I am a resident and number two, I have been talking and liaising with our people obviously understanding the sense and how best we can address them.

“So our major problem in Harare East is water.

“There is no water and as you are fully aware, water is life, that’s a serious disaster that we’ve got.

“We’re looking at a constituency with almost 37 000 people and these people don’t have running water. We are going to address that challenge,” he said.

Cde Mutimbanyoka said there were other service delivery issues within the constituency.

“Most of them don’t get addressed by us as Parliamentarians. They get addressed by the councillors. So the reason why we are going into Parliament is for us to push for councils to be assisted so that at least they can then start pushing for service delivery.  We’re actually saying let’s go to Parliament and see if there is a certain portion that can be set aside to assist the local authorities especially now that most of our people are not paying their bills and obviously that’s crippling local authorities. At least if we push for a policy that enables the local authorities to be assisted possibly on a quarterly basis by Government.”

He said while Government was making some assistance available through devolution funds, these were not adequate.

“We are saying on service delivery issues, there is got to be some kind of assistance that has to come from Government.

‘‘I understand there was Operation Chenesa that was pushed by Government sometime last year. It’s something that has to be ongoing so that our people have a better livelihood.”

Cde Mutimbanyoka said his manifesto is very simple and he does not want make unrealistic promises to Harare East constituents.

“There are two cantonment areas (Chikurubi and Support Unit), the biggest challenge right now, is some of them are sharing a single house, three families in one house, that’s a problem.

“So as a Government, we are going to try by all means to assist such that at the end of the day whenever a budget is actually being set, we’ll simply push for a certain quarter to be set aside for the us to improve all our cantonment areas,” he said.  Cde Mutimbanyoka said land was not a problem as it was readily available.

“The beauty of it is they have got land. We need something like what they have done at Tomlinson Depot where the new flats are nearing completion. We want the same to happen this side as well. That’s a genuine concern that our people have. If we were to have cholera hitting us here, people will perish because obviously they will be affected because of how they are living. Three families in one house, that’s not ideal.”

He also said Harare East does not have adequate schools.

“Our kids are walking long distances to go to school. We want that to be addressed as well. By and large, the biggest one is on service delivery. Once we sort out on the service delivery issue where we know for a fact that we don’t have much of a control but we can actually influence the Government that at least it can come through, at least our people will actually benefit.”

Cde Mutimbanyoka said roads in Harare East are in a sorry state.

“That has got to be sorted out.

“So there are quite a number of issues that we are thinking that we can actually push for once we get into Parliament so that at least Government can address them,” he said.

Cde Mutimbanyoka said this year there is drought and although Harare East comprised some affluent wards, people still needed help to alleviate the effects of the drought.

“And it’s not anyone’s fault but we are thinking that at least our Government can actually come through for our people.

“I have got two wards; the other ward which is ward 9, we have got so many people there, that’s the residential side.

“And that’s where we have got so many people that are affected, about 18 000 people there.” he said.

Cde Mutimbanyoka said the affluent suburbs will also need some help.

“We also have ward 18, it’s more or less the affluent side. So obviously they also get to feel the same but not as much as the high density suburbs where there isn’t much in terms of what to do and how to accommodate themselves so that they can get around the challenges that we are having.”