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Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
The First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe yesterday exposed officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development who tried to extort $1,8 million from her under the guise of implementing the Bulawayo Kraal Irrigation Scheme in Binga. Dr Mugabe, in her capacity as Zanu-PF secretary for Women’s League, recently visited the project where she took over its supervision and ordered its operationalisation to uplift livelihoods of people in Binga.
Addressing a meeting of the Women’s League national and provincial executive members at the party headquarters yesterday, Dr Mugabe said it turned out that the ministry’s officials were not happy with the Women’s League take over of the supervision of the project.
She said after her visit to Binga last week, the officials wrote a letter to her demanding $1,8 million without elaborating how they intended to use it. Dr Mugabe said although she indicated that it was important to operationalise the project, she never said she would finance it from her pocket.
She said she wanted to engage other developmental partners that would assist financially and the letter came as a surprise to her.
Dr Mugabe said she had since raised the matter with Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Dr Joseph Made.
“The Ministry of Agriculture is there (at the Bulawayo Kraal Irrigation Scheme), there are people on the ground,” she said.
“They told us what they are trying to do to ensure that the project is resuscitated.
“Yes, they are doing some work on the ground, but I thought what they are doing is a half-baked cake and I told them in no uncertain terms that they should look at the reasons why this project failed when it was first implemented.
“When we look at that then we put our hands together and look at what we can actually do for us to be able to say we have resuscitated the project successfully.”
Dr Mugabe said the ministry officials were supposed to first work on a plan that would chart the way forward on how equipment donated from Brazil was to be used.
“They went ahead, they took the equipment there and what they did . . . they wrote to me, they sent an invoice to me, an invoice amounting to $1,8 million, that they wanted the money from the First Lady to be able to carry out the work that is supposed to be done,” she said.
“I then said I want to know how you arrived at $1,8 million and what you are doing to me is unfair. That is not the approach I intend to apply. I have something in mind that I think is sustainable and that is what I think should be followed.”
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