War vets spouses undergo vetting

The exercise, at Zanu-PF provincial headquarters at Davies Hall, began on Wednesday and ends today.

The exercise will continue at a later date pending the first batch being processed in Harare on Monday.
The exercise caters for widows and widowers of war veterans.
Widows and widowers have been failing to access benefits such as monthly payouts from the Government of $230 because they did not have adequate documentation.
The most problematic were declaration letters that were not complete, as they had to be signed in Harare.

The war veterans who have died had been declared by the province but not nationally, thus being turned away at the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare because of the document.
Speaking to Chronicle yesterday, chairman of the exercise Cde Langelihle Mathe bemoaned the untold suffering faced by war veterans’ widows and widowers.

“They start suffering when the spouse is ill, he or she dies the monies are difficult to get as they would be turned away by the social welfare officers because their war veteran status had not been declared nationally, so this exercise wants to fix that,” said Cde Mathe.
He said the next step in the exercise would be to look at orphans of war veterans so that they could benefit.
“There are orphaned children out there and they should benefit from the parents’ welfare and continue with their education so that they can be taken out of poverty,” said Cde Mathe.

ZNLWVA provincial administrator for Bulawayo chapter Cde Bonifas Ndlovu echoed the same sentiments.
He, however, said widowers were not forthcoming although they were facing the same problems.
“Some of our fallen comrades’ children had dropped out of school because of lack of funds and they find themselves in a vicious cycle of poverty so we want to break that cycle,” said Cde Ndlovu.

“We want this problem to be fixed.”
A widow, Mrs Sarah Ncube, urged the relevant authorities to speed up the process.
She said her husband died in May 2002 and his benefits were cut in July the same year.

“I waited until August 2005 that is when I started getting the money. I have four children and that was a difficult time in my life,” said Mrs Ncube.
So far 150 widows and widowers have been vetted, 36 of which already had complete letters of declaration.