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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Govt
fails Murambatsvina victims: Parly committee
Clemence
Manyukwe, The Zimbabwe Independent
November 10, 2006
http://www.theindependent.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=11&id=8461&siteid=1
THE government
has failed to honour its obligation to provide accommodation to
victims of Operation
Murambatsvina more than a year after launching a campaign which
a United Nations (UN) envoy said was carried out with "indifference
to human suffering", a parliamentary committee has said.
In its report
presented in parliament on Tuesday, the parliamentary portfolio
committee on Local Government, chaired by Zanu PF Mazowe West legislator
Margaret Zinyemba, said government should build more houses for
the homeless bearing in mind that the demolition exercise "had generated
a lot of debate and criticism locally and internationally".
Last year’s
report by UN
envoy Anna Tibaijuka said the demolitions had left 700 000 Zimbabweans
homeless and destitute and affected a further 2, 4 million.
In the latest
parliamentary report, the Local Government committee said it had
"noted that the initially announced budget of $3 trillion was fairly
reasonable. However, government failed to honour its obligation
that would see the project through to completion."
It added that
the housing project dubbed Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle was of
critical concern to it.
"In terms of
project implementation, no significant progress was made, as funds
provided were too little for any meaningful development to take
place. In fact, the secretary for the Ministry of Local Government
informed the committee during a briefing on the project’s progress
that no progress had been made on most sites
visited by the
committee during the previous session, " the committee said.
It also said
that the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act must be reviewed
urgently as some of the problems related to Operation Murambatsvina
were blamed on flaws cited in the Act.
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