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NewsDay

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Over 170 000 vendors lose goods worth $580 000

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ZAPU leader Dumiso Dabengwa yesterday said financial challenges had forced his party to reschedule its second elective congress, which was due last month to the end of year.

MORE than 170 000 vendors countrywide have reportedly lost goods worth over half a million dollars after they were confiscated by municipal police in one of the worst humanitarian crisis since the 2005 Operation Murambatsvina, a vendors’ representative body has said.

BY PHYLLIS MBANJE

The Vendors’ Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation (VISET) yesterday said during the month of July, 173 462 vendors were displaced from the central business districts of different cities countrywide and goods worth $579 239 were confiscated by municipal police.

“This is unacceptable and as VISET we call upon the government to engage us because arrests and persecutions will not yield results,” VISET director Samuel Wadzai said.

Harare Municipal police destroy tables belonging to vendors operating at the corner of Julius Nyerere Way and Charter Road this morning.
Harare Municipal police destroy tables belonging to vendors operating at the corner of Julius Nyerere Way and Charter Road this morning.

The VISET report came as the Zimbabwe Informal Sector Organisation (Ziso) has threatened to sue First Lady Grace Mugabe for claiming that all seized vendors’ wares had been handed over to her for distribution among Zanu PF supporters.

Addressing a Zanu PF Women’s League rally at Murombedzi Growth Point in Zvimba last month, Grace disclosed that she had 150 bales of confiscated goods which she later doled out to party supporters.

Meanwhile, in its July report, the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) said the Zimbabwean situation was out of control. “The major conflict drivers being the rampant job losses across the country, demolition of houses, deepening inter and intra-party conflict, the perpetual election mode as a result of by-elections and serious food deficits currently ravaging the country,” ZPP said.

The Fragile States Index (2015), produced by The Fund for Peace, which is a critical tool in highlighting pressures that all states experienced that were likely to push a state to the brink of failure, rated Zimbabwe in the “high alert” category, along with war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.