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Fuel shortages cripple ZPCS

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FUEL shortages have grounded vehicles at Khami Maximum Security Prison, resulting in its failure to take remand prisoners to court for trial and sentencing in Bulawayo since the beginning of the week.

BY NQOBANI NDLOVU

FUEL shortages have grounded vehicles at Khami Maximum Security Prison, resulting in its failure to take remand prisoners to court for trial and sentencing in Bulawayo since the beginning of the week.

This emerged at the Bulawayo Magistrates’ Courts when MDC activist Josphat Mzaca Ngulube and three others, convicted for the January protests, failed to attend court for sentencing owing to transport shortages.

Ngulube contested last year’s parliamentary elections as an independent candidate in Bulawayo South constituency before joining the MDC early this year.

Ngulube, Fortune Masuku, Melusi Moyo and Otilia Sibanda were last week convicted bymagistrate Tinashe Tashaya on charges of burning three cars belonging to Zanu PF Bulawayo provincial women’s league chairperson, Eva Bitu, during the protests.

Prosecutor Jetro Mada told he court that on January 14 at about 7am, the accused persons connived with 100 others and unlawfully blocked traffic at an intersection along Sizinda Road and Nketa Drive.

Mada said the crew accused Bitu of solely benefiting from taxpayers’ money and pushed her Ford Ranger out of the yard and set it alight.

“The accused persons went back into the yard, where they had left a Nissan NP300 and a Toyota Vitz. They set alight the Nissan, whose flames destroyed part of the Vitz. The Ford Ranger and Nissan NP300 were burnt beyond repair,” the prosecutor said.

Mada said the cars have a total value of US$95 000.

Tashaya was on Monday set to sentence the quartet, but the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) failed to take the convicts to court, forcing the magistrate to postpone the matter to Tuesday.

It was the same story on Tuesday.

Tashaya again postponed their sentencing to tomorrow after the State promised to engage the ZPCS to bring the convicts to court.

“We will try to arrange transport so that the convicts attend court. We might have to look for transport from Ntabazinduna Prisons,” Tashaya said.

On Monday, lawyer Nqobani Sithole, who is representing the convicts, resisted Tashaya’s suggestion to deliver his sentence at Khami Maximum Security Prison after ZPCS failed to bring the convicts to court.

The ZPCS faces many challenges which include overcrowding in prisons, fuel, food and clothing shortages, which triggered riots at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare in 2015. The ZPCS’s challenges are blamed on underfunding from the Treasury.