Kwekwe mayor Matenda Madzoke has rapped his predecessors of rushing to shut down a community-owned nursery school two years ago without considering the plight of the 60 kindergarten children who were affected by the move. BY BLESSED MHLANGA
In 2013, council management closed down the 51-year-old Kwekwe Nursery School saying they wanted to convert the building into a modern maternity wing, but the project has not yet materialised. “There is no money to convert it into a clinic and work is not going to start any time soon,” Madzoke said.
“I really don’t know why the eviction was hurried and what the motives were because at the time the decision was made I was not in council, but if you ask me it was a bad decision”.
Councillor Weston Masiya described the decision to close the nursery school as politically-motivated.
“We used to get rentals from the property and children were being educated, that property was serving a purpose to the community, but now it’s empty and deteriorating every day because of a political and stupid decision,” Masiya said.
The school was closed after town clerk Emmanuel Musara took the community trust which ran the project to the High Court. Former chairman of the trust, Philip Boka, said: “How do to you evict children mid-term when you don’t even have the money to do what you allege you want to do two years down the line?”
