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Nqobile Tshili Chronicle Correspondent
THE government has released $4 million to pay for war veterans’ children’s school fees, the Minister of Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Former Political Detainees and Restrictees, Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa has said.
In a ministerial statement delivered in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Cde Mutsvangwa said his ministry had budgetary constraints that the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Cde Patrick Chinamasa, is now addressing.
“I want to thank him that in the last two to there weeks, we have managed to have total remittance to the Ministry of War Veterans’ Affairs to the tune of US$4 million. This is out of an outstanding commitment of US$19 million since 2013,” he said.
“Your war veterans have been having a hard time paying school and examination fees for their children, among many other sacrifices which they have to bear within this period because of the fiscal challenges which the economy is facing.”
He said the funds that treasury had released would be deposited into the bank accounts of war veterans in due course.
Cde Mutsvangwa said following the attainment of independence in 1980, war veterans were demobilised unceremoniously as they were just given money for transport to go to their homes.
Up to now, he said, some of them were living in poverty.
Cde Mutsvangwa said war veterans, detainees and war collaborators must participate in economic activities through engaging in mining and agro- farming.
“I’ve been travelling all over the country. The state of my war veteran colleagues isn’t something which I want to be saying I’m proud of. They’re in a sorry state, even their physical state is not that good. They are living, some of them, on the margins of life in rural areas. This isn’t how a proud country can treat its war veteran heroes. I’m appealing to the Members of Parliament that as we go along, this situation be addressed because they (war veterans) are the soul of the nation,” he said.
“I also want to go to the issue of the welfare of the various widows from this troika of war veterans, collaborators and of the detainees. They seem to be falling in between, and in most instances their situation deteriorates, particularly on the women side when their husbands die. It’s important that widows of war veterans are not undue victims of either rapacious family members from the late husband’s side or for that matter from avaricious bureaucrats who take advantage of the demise of their husbands to try to move on the land or the pieces of land which their husbands may have been given under the land reform programme.”
The minister said as part of efforts to address challenges faced by ex-combatants, his ministry would initiate a vetting process to have a genuine record of those who participated in the liberation war. He said the vetting would not be conducted in the cities, but people would be asked to go back to their respective war zones in a programme that he said would act as a wonderful reunion of former fighters and their commanders. On the detainees, he said, the work is easy because they are in Rhodesian prisons records.
Cde Mutsvangwa said his ministry was working on realigning laws dealing with matters concerning war veterans to the Constitution.
Online Reporter