Zimbabwean returns from UK to combat youth drug abuse and crime in Bulawayo neighbourhood

WHEN Mr Gani Phiri (42) left his posh and lavish life in the United Kingdom for Zimbabwe a few years ago, it was for a good humane reason.

It wasn’t because he had become bored of life but his return was inspired by changing the lives of the youth.

Mr Phiri like many other diaspora-based Zimbabweans had been keenly following the news and trends of the country and was disappointed to learn about youth decadence. A decadence fuelled by drugs and substance abuse.

“It’s saddening even today to see that the youth have no drive or zeal in life to become respectable or to have a vision to develop the country. I had been reading and following the news and it was disheartening to see how the youths were flushing their futures down the drain,” said Mr Phiri.

He was a caregiver in the UK and said he decided to return to Zimbabwe and to his home in Bulawayo’s Gwabalanda suburb to try and convince the youth that drugs are a hazard.

When he returned he also learnt of a rise in crime in the suburb and then decided to initiate a neighbourhood watch project driven by the youths.

“The Gwabalanda community was facing a lot of thefts, electricity cables, break-ins and muggings. It was so scary and residents were living in fear. Being a resident in Gwabalanda l then decided to call an emergency meeting on how best we could tackle these crime-related incidents/ problems.”

“It wasn’t easy convincing all residents about the neighbourhood watch formation. We came up with an idea and then decided to sell the idea through a door-to-door campaign. We did this every day for 6 weeks,” said Mr Phiri.

He said the door-to-door initiative was also to create a database of community members.

“Here we were gathering information such as names, and phone numbers so that we could create an information dissemination platform and an emergency platform for members to use in case of emergency,” said Mr Phiri.

He said the project has been running for almost three months with half of the neighbourhood coming on board to support the initiative.

“Each household pays US$2 a month which goes towards our security inventory and paying the guards. We are going for our third month now with our project and we have intercepted a lot of criminals. More than 10 suspects have been caught since we started our project and have been handed to the police,” said Mr Phiri.

He said the plan behind the neighbourhood watch project is to provide employment to the youth as well as to deliver them from drug and substance abuse.

“As part of our campaign, we will be conducting a series of activities to highlight the “lesser-known impacts” of drug abuse. The campaign demonstrates a skewed and overly simplistic understanding of drug problems. People who use drugs are bankrolled by criminals who enslave women and destroy the environment. Drug abuse leads to infertility, therefore threatening our country’s population,” said Mr Phiri.

He said he aims to find partners and take the campaign to other neighbourhoods.

“Hopefully if all goes well we hope to partner with various stakeholders in and outside the country to boost this initiative and have a drug-free country,” said Mr Phiri.

He said that preventing and treating drug abuse are both critically important in ensuring the health and well-being of the nation and its people.

“The purpose of the campaign is to promote the primary prevention of drug abuse, which means preventing drug abuse before it starts. The campaign focuses on primary prevention for three key reasons. First, primary prevention targets the underlying causes of drug use, and, therefore, has the greatest potential to reduce the scope of the problem over the long term. Second, over time a primary prevention campaign will lessen the need for drug treatment services, which are in critically short supply. And third, a campaign has greater potential to affirm and reinforce the anti-drug attitudes of youth who are not involved in drug use than to persuade experienced drug users to change their behaviour,” said Mr Phiri.