…ZUJ urges media to consider rural communities in news coverage

Ngoni Dapira

MUTASA Central legislator Trevor Saruwaka has accused the new dispensation Government of politicking at the expense of much needed development in his constituency.The constituency which is about 40km from Mutare is rural and most people survive on subsistence farming and small-scale commercial farming.

Honourable Saruwaka revealed this last week Friday during a media tour of his constituency organized by the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ). After taking journalists through a tour of a mortuary project at Dada clinic in Tsonzo, which was completed in October last year, but is still to be commissioned, Hon Saruwaka said such bureaucratic delays by Government impeded economic development.

“The Public works (Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing) officers have not come to commission this project in nearly a year now. When they come they just keep looking for flimsy excuses such as the paint job not being good enough or the floor is not up to standard and many other excuses. They last came a week ago but I have since come to a conclusion it’s a gimmick to hold back the opening of this facility. Sadly, it is the community members who are suffering from these delays,” said the MDC-Alliance legislator.

The mortuary cold chamber houses a maximum of three corpses, while Dada clinic is the major referral health centre for the many wards in Mutasa Central. Hon Saruwaka said the mortuary project which was built through his constitutional development fund (CDF) cost $50 000 ZW which was about US$6500 at that time last year. He said he also received financial assistance from a British Embassy fund to purchase the mortuary equipment. “This was a dilapidated structure which was used as the hospital kitchen some years back. So we needed to completely refurbish the facility into a mortuary and rebuild it to accommodate the cold chamber. When this starts operating I think it will be a very busy mortuary because it will serve many other communities surrounding Tsonzo. This mortuary was a special request from the health workers in this area to help cut travel costs for locals. The clinic has about 12 beds to admit patients so it is fairly big,” he said.

The Mutasa Central legislator added that there is need to think of the rural communities without proper health care systems, especially in these critical times of the global covid-19 pandemic. He said political processes should not block development but create conditions that are supportive, facilitating economic and social advancement. He appealed for action, calling on politicians to ‘forget political games’ and come together to augment development, especially in rural constituencies.

Watsomba Business Association chairperson Franklin Nyaumwe. examines the temperature in the mortuary cold room after it was turned on.

“People from this area are forced to hire vehicles to ferry the corpses of their deceased all the way to Mutare, Old Mutare or to Hauna where mortuaries are still working. The nearby mortuaries used to be at St Barbra clinic and Bonda but they are no longer working for more than two years now. In some cases if people do not have enough money they are forced to quickly bury the deceased before all the relatives from far and wide would have arrived for the funeral, which is not fair.”

Adding, “People look at the political side of issues instead of just treating development separately from politics. And in any case, once a Member of Parliament is elected, that MP is there to serve that community for that term, so every Government agency and department must collaborate and corporate with elected officials so that services intended for the community are seen through for the benefit of the community,” he said.

Asked on the efforts he had made since last year to try and get the mortuary opened, Hon Saruwaka said he had on countless times engaged the district medical officer and the provincial medical officer over the issue. He even spoke to the former Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obediah Moyo whom he said he had eventually reached a compromise with in March, but unfortunately this was the time that the covid-19 lockdown started followed by his sacking.

“I told them we do not need the formality of anyone coming to cut a ribbon. They should just allow the community to use it (mortuary) and come later when they have the time. This is not my personal project but a constitutional development fund (CDF) project to help the community,” refuted the Mutasa Central legislator.

He said he also raised the matter with the Speaker of Parliament Honourable Jacob Mudenda in March and complained that the CDF and community projects were being unnecessarily stalled at the expense of the struggling communities. Unfortunately Parliament was dissolved shortly afterwards because of the covid-19 pandemic measures and only resumed early this month, so Hon Saruwaka said he is yet to get feedback on the issue.

ZUJ secretary general Foster Dongozi said the media is an essential service during the covid-19 pandemic and their programme which will run countrywide is meant to improve access to information, highlighting the issues affecting different communities countrywide.

Mutare journalists (extreme left) with Mutasa residents following proceedings during the presentation by ZUJ secretary general Foster Dongozi at Watsomba.

“We have urban and rural areas but more often the voice of rural communities is overlooked. There are issues to do with service delivery, child rights, women rights, business to mention a few. This becomes an integral role of the media that we want to drive as ZUJ, helping our journalists to broadly cover stories during covid-19, as we are aware that most journalists are working under stringent budgets to effectively take on travel stories,” said Dongozi.

Since President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration took office, expectations of a transformative approach to economic and political reforms have been high after he promised to return to constitutionalism and prioritise business ahead of politics in his inauguration speech, which was buttressed by the famous mantra, ‘Zimbabwe is open for business.’

Hon Saruwaka said he hopes to see politicians work tirelessly to offer servant leadership with regards to improving the lives of the populace. Adding that Government should instead be development oriented and be at the forefront of fighting systematic corruption and bureaucratic processes that impede economic growth.