A well established partner who had pledged to assist government in building 500 houses for the Cyclone Idai victims in Chimanimani has pulled out of the deal owing to unnecessary delays, 263Chat has established.
The country’s largest mobile network operator, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe had promised to built 500 houses for Chimanimani villagers who are still living in temporary shelter, more than a year after the Cyclone idai disaster left more than 500 people dead and thousands homeless.
Appearing before the parliamentary committee on budget, finance and economic development yesterday, Department Of Civil Protection Unit (CPU) Director Nathan Nkomo told parliamentarians that Econet had pulled out of the deal, forcing government to continue with the project on its own.
“We want to thank the partner for the work they had done in the field. They had done much progress on the land hence making it easier for us to start from where they left,” said Nkomo.
He admitted that delays on the part of government frustrated the partner resulting in a pull-out.
“They pulled out because of delays of the geo-survey that we were carrying out. The delays caused fatigue hence we made cabinet aware that they had pulled out,” said Nkomo.
In a telephone interview with Econet Wireless Media and Corporate Communications Executive, Fungai Mandiveyi confirmed that they had indeed pulled out.
“For now I cannot comment on that, but we did pull out because of reasons l cannot say. We gave our position to the authorities about that. However we did our part there, we assisted orphans by getting them on scholarships among other contributions,” said Mandiveyi.
Government delays in addressing the humanitarian situation of Chimanimani villagers could see the cyclone idai victims continuing to live under inhabitable conditions longer than initially anticipated.
