adminbase at a secondary school in the constituency and was forcing villagers to donate food and money.
The villagers denied the claims at a meeting organised by the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee at Sherenje Secondary School to investigate the accusations by Mr Mangoma, who is MDC-T representative for Makoni North and also Energy and Power Development Minister.
“As far as I know, the programme here has helped the village a lot. The youths have repaired the roads and are helping the elderly with harvesting and other jobs.
“They have also dug blair toilets at the school and homes of the elderly, all the food and money that have been given to them has been done voluntarily.
“I am actually surprised to hear this talk that people are being forced to donate. This programme has actually reduced idleness and drunkenness among the youths,” a villager Mr Fanuel Neshena said.
Mr Neshena was responding to questions from Jomic officials.
A youth undergoing training at the institution, Elite Mandeya, said there was nothing amiss with the programme.
“This programme is apolitical. We are being taught skills and that has helped us a lot. I failed my academic studies but I have been taught gardening and poultry as a way to sustain my children. It is unfortunate that people are politicising everything instead of focusing on development issues,” she said.
Councillor for Ward 7, Cde Pascallia Chigwaza (Zanu-PF), denied that the youths were being trained to perpetrate acts of violence in the area.
“As the local leader, I have not heard anything about that. It is surprising that people go and make reports far away without first reporting to the local leadership.
“It shows total contempt of our local leaders. What the youths are doing here is beneficial to the community and we do not see why anyone should be opposed to that,” she said.
Retired Colonel John Mutasa who was standing in for Chief Makoni, said it was important that young people be taught skills to start businesses.
“As the traditional leaders here, this programme has helped us a lot to deal with youth delinquency and other social ills. The parents are the ones that bear the brunt of idle children and when I came and saw the various initiatives by the children, I did not see anything wrong with that,” he said.
The Jomic leadership which included co-chairperson, Cde Oppah Muchinguri (Zanu-PF) MDC’s representative and committee member, Mr Frank Chamunorwa and MDC-T’s Thabitha Khumalo attended the meeting.
Cde Muchinguri urged people in the community to co-exist in peace and urged the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment to publicise its programmes to remove doubts and suspicion.
“We are all Zimbabweans and we should live in peace, if there is violence we affect development so we should not spoil the youth training programme by politicising it,” she said.
She also urged leaders not to incite violence among their followers.
Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said his ministry had various programmes to empower youths. Contrary to assertions in some quarters, he said the Global Political Agreement had not suspended the National Youth Service training programme.
“As Government we want to empower youths and do not want to neglect them because of politics. There is nowhere in the GPA that says stop the NYS training programme.
“We should depoliticise the issue and ensure that the youth benefit from the various initiatives that we have as a ministry,” he said.
Mr Mangoma called for peace among villagers for the betterment of their community although they objected to his attempts to make unsubstantiated claims about incidences of violence in the constituency.
Mr Mangoma claimed in his complaint that Zanu-PF had set up a base at Sherenje Secondary School used to attack its opponents.
However, it emerged the youths were undergoing training conducted by the Ministry of Youth to equip them with skills to start businesses.
Online Reporter