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NewsDay

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Parly to investigate reports of prostitution, drug abuse among Zim students in Cyprus

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PARLIAMENT says it will soon dispatch a fact-finding team to Cyprus to investigate alleged reports of prostitution and rampant drug abuse among Zimbabwean students studying in that country.

PARLIAMENT says it will soon dispatch a fact-finding team to Cyprus to investigate alleged reports of prostitution and rampant drug abuse among Zimbabwean students studying in that country.

BY TALENT GUMPO/SHARON SIBINDI

Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, Kindness Paradza, yesterday said his committee was seized with the matter.

“We are investigating those issues and so far we have interviewed a number of agencies sending students to Cyprus and they have confirmed those problems. We interviewed students on attachment and those on holidays in the country, they confirmed those problems,” he said.

“We will send a delegation to investigate the issue and we have also got complaints from parents who have students there and so far three boys have been arrested on drug trafficking and each has been given a seven-year jail term,” he said.

But, the Zimbabwe-Cyprus students’ community dismissed the reports as exaggerated.

“Like in any other foreign land, there will always be bumps in the process of settling down and the key is to remember one’s purpose in the nation before anything else,” students’ spokesperson Realsie Mwase said.

Mwase said North Cyprus was not free of ills, but there was nothing like what was portrayed in the media.

“North Cyprus is not free of ills, but it is nothing like the hellish Sodom and Gomorrah it is made to be in exaggerated reports…it is time to acknowledge that North Cyprus experience will do the world good to those who utilise the opportunities availed to them and dare to create more,” he said.