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Thousands
affected by Ziscosteel closure
Blessed
Mhlanga, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
April 23, 2013
http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2013/04/23/thousands-affected-by-ziscosteel-closure/
Passing through
the once imposing nerve centre of Zimbabwean economy - Ziscosteel
- one would be forgiven for thinking they are entering a graveyard;
the silence here is so loud it can’t be ignored.
The few employees
who still mill around the dilapidated structures do so aimlessly,
they could well be undertakers slowly burying the shell which was
once the pride of the nation and a source of livelihood for a population
of over 100 000 people in Redcliff and Kwekwe.
Sifanjani Mpofu,
a plant attendant at Ziscosteel for 23 years, has not received a
meaningful salary for a cumulative 20 months. He painted a picture
of a gloomy and bleak future saying he has no hope of ever seeing
the machines, blast furnaces and coke ovens coming to life again.
“We are
still coming to work because we have nowhere else to go but all
hope of ever seeing Ziscosteel work again has disappeared like morning
mist,” he says.
Mpofu has since
sent his wife and children to their rural home in Silobela to till
the land and try to earn a living but with the poor rains that have
characterised four consecutive planting seasons, his family now
relies on food donations.
He joins hundreds
of other workers who are debt ridden and can no longer afford electricity
in their homes or to pay their water bills which have ballooned
in the case of Mpofu to US$700.
Zesa’s
move to install prepaid meters now means most homes in Torwood will
be without electricity since most of them cannot afford to pay.
Ziscosteel at
its peak used to produce over 50 000 tonnes of prime iron and steel
and employed close to 5 000 full-time employees and several hundreds
of others downstream.
No production
has been recorded since 2009; and where there used to be smoke now
lies spider webs; where fire used to burn 24-hours a day, rats have
made barrows.
Minister of
Industry and Commerce, Welshman Ncube has blamed Zanu-PF, especially
the ministry of mines for the stalling of the Essar deal.
“The ministry
of mines has been shifting goal posts everytime we want to seal
the deal, they are the major reason why it has not been concluded,”
said Ncube.
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