Online Reporter
Remember Deketeke and Takunda Gambiza
THE Zanu PF Veterans, Ex-Political Prisoners, Detainees and Restrictees League yesterday convened a meeting to deliberate and prepare resolutions to be presented at the party’s forthcoming Annual National People’s Conference, scheduled for Mutare next month.
Speaking after the meeting in Harare, Zanu PF Secretary for Veterans, Ex-Political Prisoners, Detainees and Restrictees, Cde Douglas Mahiya, said the resolutions will focus mainly on improving the welfare and livelihoods of former freedom fighters.
“The war veterans are meeting here to prepare for the Zanu PF 22nd National People’s Conference in Mutare. Our resolutions will focus on addressing the social and economic needs of war veterans,” he said.
“We need to focus on the welfare of war veterans.
“So, we need to put in place our own resolutions, which I am not able to talk about now because we are not yet through.”
Cde Mahiya noted that many former fighters, particularly in rural areas, continue to face serious economic challenges.
“The war veterans themselves are in very bad shape in terms of their welfare.
“There is need for the party or government to create projects and programmes that assist war veterans to reinsert themselves back into society.”
Cde Mahiya acknowledged that while veterans had benefited from the War Veterans Presidential Fund, additional resources were required to achieve meaningful empowerment.
“Our thrust is to empower these war veterans to become self-empowered economic fighters that will help in increasing the country’s GDP and assist in attaining an upper-middle-income economy by 2030,” he said.
“The President in his wisdom availed this War Veterans Fund to assist war veterans establish projects that can sustain them and their families as well as create direct and indirect employment.”
Furthermore, Cde Mahiya expressed gratitude to the Government, through the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, for extending a discount on land costs to war veterans.
