Online Reporter
Lovemore Kadzura
Post Reporter
GOVERNMENT has assured beneficiaries of the Chiduku Irrigation Scheme (formerly Romsely) that they will not be evicted to make way for “connected” individuals seeking to take over land at one of the country’s most mechanised irrigation projects.
Concerns had arisen among farmers, particularly where original beneficiaries have since passed away, with surviving spouses and orphans fearing displacement amid an ongoing verification of the beneficiary list.
Makoni District Development Coordinator, Mr Edwin Mashindi, clarified that the process of selecting scheme beneficiaries was long completed.
He stressed that in cases where beneficiaries have died, their families will assume the plots to ensure continuity.
“The allocation process was completed way back and the beneficiaries are there already. There are no new allocations being done at the moment as there is an existing list of beneficiaries. Some of the beneficiaries are now part and parcel of the Joint Venture with a private player, Mundamurefu.
“When the beneficiary passes on, the family approaches us and inform us their person of choice to replace the late member. If both the husband and wife passes on, the person chosen through the Master of High Court process takes over, and we change the names accordingly,” said Mr Mashindi.
However, emotions are running high among the community as they expressed fear of losing out after heavily contributing to the successful completion of the scheme as they were made to partake in land clearing as part of their contribution.
The Irrigation Management Committee secretary, Mr Simon Mazambani
said the proposed 10 percent non community member allocation is too much considering that some locals are still to benefit.
“There was e beneficiary selection done by the DDC’s Office, Makoni Rural District Council and the Ministry of Lands in 2022. They selected people with permits and some without and the number was 334. They also said they will reserve 10 percent for Government officials, but they had not exhausted all the locals for allocation. We are now surprised that they wanted today (Wednesday) to carry out a re-registration exercise.
“The beneficiary list was also submitted to the funder, OPEC. We recently submitted the list to ARDA so that we get title deeds. As part of our contribution to the scheme, we cleared the land and the earth canal since 2022. We are farming now and contributing to payment of water, electricity and land levies. We questioned them what are the new people’s contribution to the scheme. We have locals who contributed to the development of the scheme who should be considered. For instance, in Block C there are 85 hectares under centre pivots and each beneficiary was supposed to get a hectare. Only 46 locals were selected, leaving the remainder of 39 to foreigners, and this is the scenario in all the five blocks,” said Mr Mazambani whose sentiments were echoed by committee member, Mr Whisper Makani.
Chiduku Irrigation Scheme was revived by Government through funding from OPEC to the tune of US$4,5 million.
It covers 380 hectares and it is the only irrigation scheme under 24 centre pivots. This has made the scheme attractive and there is jostling of pieces of land.
