INSIZA’s ward 17 Zanu PF councillor Abdale Nkomo has clashed with villagers in his area who are accusing him of unfairly distributing maize under the Grain Marketing Board’s grain loan scheme.
Report by Staff Reporter
Representatives of the affected villagers who spoke to NewsDay yesterday said they had been made to pay $3 and R6 as transport costs for the maize, but they sometimes did not get their allocations.
“Some of us do not get maize even after we have paid. Even civil servants in our area do not get maize,” said one of the affected villagers.”
They also accused Nkomo of selling some of the maize at his home at Mafuta village and appealed to the authorities to act.
But Nkomo yesterday dismissed the claims saying they were coming from his political rivals.
“If you are handling food, you will not satisfy everybody,” Nkomo said.
“I have 24 villages in my ward and in those villages there are 24 kraal heads with their secretaries making up a 48-member grain loan distribution committee.”
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He said his ward had 1 200 households while at the moment, the maize allocation sent to the ward was between 300 and 400 bags, meaning there was a deficit of between 800 and 900 bags.
“The committee and villagers agreed that since our allocation was inadequate, villagers must be arranged in groups equal to the allocation and every month a group of 400 households gets the maize,” said Nkomo.
He said the villagers were paying $3 for transport and R3 for registration forms.
The councillor said since September, maize supplies had been erratic but the money which villagers paid was still there and would be used whenever maize deliveries are to be made.
He said they had already made an appeal to government to increase the maize supplies
