Government welfare officer selling donated goods at Hopely Farm

By Tererai Karimakwenda
08 November 2006

An employee of the ministry of labour and social welfare is allegedly selling
food, blankets, clothing, sanitary ware and other goods which are being donated to victims of last year’s Operation Murambatsvina. The disastrous government sponsored demolitions displaced nearly one million people and brought much suffering to Zimbabweans. Many of the families from Porta Farm outside Harare, whose homes were bulldozed, were forced to relocate to a squatter camp at Hopely Farm.

Speaking to Gugulethu Moyo on the programme In The Balance, lawyer Tafadzwa Mugabe from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said Ezekiel Mupande, a government appointed welfare officer, is making money by diverting donated goods meant to benefit the victims of Murambatsvina at Hopely. He said Mupande also uses some of the new brick houses to store the stolen goods he is selling. Meanwhile the displaced families are sleeping in plastic shacks instead of benefiting from the houses built specifically for them under Operation Garikai.

The shocking revelations come just days after a report on the Zimonline news site which said the government was preparing a new task force which would launch another version of Murambatsvina. But Tafadzwa Mugabe said the illegal forced evictions by government never stopped and many of the victims were displaced again, with very few being given new homes under Garikai.

You can hear more about the plight of the victims of Murambatsvina on the programme, In The Balance after the news.