Back to Index

A response to the article "Girl Child Network loses labour dispute"
Girl Child Network Trust
May 07, 2010

This statement is in response to the article entitled: "Girl Child Network loses labour dispute" as published by the Daily News online (04 May, 2010) on the subject of former Girl Child Network Zimbabwe (GCN) employee, Ropafadzo Mapimhidze, who received an award in her favour following arbitration proceedings that took place recently.

Indeed the arbitrator's award was released last week and our legal practitioners are looking into the determination with a view to note an appeal against the award, which we believe was wrongly decided.

However, of concern is that opinions in the remainder of the story deliberately portray a false picture of the situation at the organization and contain grave inaccuracies which unfairly impair the name of GCN. To our surprise and contrary to basic demands of ethical journalism GCN received no opportunity at all to comment on these misleading claims although the location of its offices and full contact details are public knowledge.

First, we wish to put it on record that Betty Makoni is no longer the Director of GCN Zimbabwe as claimed by the article. Makoni indeed left Zimbabwe in early 2008 and in her absence GCN was steered by the Board and an Acting Director. She joined her husband who is employed as a power engineer in England whereupon she set up a new organization called Girl Child Network Worldwide in London. Makoni is now permanently based in the United Kingdom and current global exposure, the "globe-trotting" claimed in the story, concerns her full-time work in that new capacity. Her relationship with GCN Zimbabwe remains simply as founder, work for which she continues to be acknowledged internationally.

Second, GCN Zimbabwe is very much on its feet. In September 2009, that is some nine months ago, the organization's board appointed a new substantive director and this was communicated to funding partners, stakeholders, and the public at large. The new director has done remarkable work to maintain the legacy of the organization, that is, to attract the solidarity of funders in order to enable its work of protecting the girl child from abuse. GCN continues this work and faces none of the so-called "serious organizational and management problems" claimed in the story. Currently, the organization has a hard-working complement of seven appointed and 11 support staff which continues to be remunerated on time despite funding challenges common in the current environment.

These facts could have been verified by a simple check.

We, therefore, wish to state that claims of an "anticipated series of lawsuits from employees" who have been "unpaid for months" by the "organization [that] battles to survive" as stated in the article are a figment of Matikinye's imagination or that of his 'sources', and we challenge that they be substantiated. The same applies to allegations of "abuse of donor funds and the organization's assets".

We note with concern that over the past few months ill-informed, fictitious and unfounded stories alleging all sorts of misdeeds by Betty Makoni and by Girl Child Network have been peddled in local and online media. In that respect we wish to end by stating that all interested journalists, partners and, indeed, members of the public are welcome to visit GCN offices and projects in order to get a true picture of the work that the organization does on a daily basis something that has inspired a number of local and global awards.

Currently, the organization is dealing with over 30 cases a week of child abuse, both physical and sexual which is just the tip of the ice-berg considering that many more cases of this endemic problem remain unreported. Since GCN was formed in 1999 as a non-profit making charity we have assisted over 50 000 girls at risk with post-traumatic rehabilitation and educational support and both records and external evaluations and audits are available for all who want to verify this fact.

Visit the GCN fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP