Tinashe Sambiri|Vibrant pressure group, Communities in Action Platform (CAP), has challenged the government to stop running the country’s economic affairs like a school tuckshop.
According to CAP, millions across the country are suffering due to rapid economic deterioration.
See CAP statement :
COMMUNITIES IN ACTION PLATFORM (CAP) POSITION ON THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY AND HOW IT IS AFFECTING LOW INCOME FAMILIES AND ZIMBABWE AT LARGE
As a community based movement that operates in rural and marginalized areas, the Communities In Action Platform (CAP) has noted the seriously deteriorating state of the economy in the country and specifically within the rural and marginalized communities and by extension the rest of the country. The socio-economic fabric of the country is being torn and ravaged due to a plethora of unsound economic policies bordering on fascism meant to benefit a few and disadvantage the majority, the economic structure of rural and marginalized communities has been relegated to the stone age together with standards of living and basic survival has given rise to a sense of hopelessness and facilitated extreme and chronic poverty whilst the means of production have been colonised by a greedy cabal that has organized itself into cartels of destruction and facilitators of misery.
The Zimbabwean Mines and Minerals Act of 1961 has seriously contributed to the corruption and politicisation of the sector as it benefits only the political elites and even the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill of 2015 failed to address the glaring inconsistencies.
The Total Consumption Poverty Line (TCPL) for the month of July stood at 23 479rtgs per person whereas an ordinary Zimbabwean teacher receives a monthly salary of 45 000rtgs per month and juxtaposing this with the high levels of unemployment and inflation rate which is the highest in the world at 595%/year is a recipe for disaster. To put this into perspective it is fundamental to understand a few statistics: poverty affects 76,3% of Zimbabwean children living in rural areas, half of Zimbabwe’s population live below the food poverty line and about 3,5 million children in Zimbabwe are chronically hungry.
The social service and humanitarian aspect is in disarray, about 69% of rural Zimbabwean women face period poverty in that they lack access to menstrual supplies or education and girls who experience period poverty miss an estimated 20% of their school life hence debunking the myth of, “LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND.”
The government has chosen to major on the minor such as the unwise decision to introduce gold coins as to stabilise the rtgs currency which in all aspects is an elitist measure that has so far failed to bring about any meaningful change but only glorified propaganda in state media.
The government should be focusing on providing proper solutions to this rising national crisis whose ripple effects are being felt everywhere, CAP has noted such a calamity and stands to remind the responsible authority of their constitutional mandate.
CAP calls upon the government to seriously interrogate its approach in fixing the national economic crisis by including the views of all stakeholders, to equitably distribute national resources such as precious minerals without giving monopoly to a few individuals with ties to the government.
CAP also demands that the government adopts the use of the USD denomination so as to rescue the economy from the catastrophic consequences of blindly adopting the Zimbabwe RTGS
The command policy of attempting to command an economy into submission is akin to squeezing water out of a stone, failure to put corrective measures into practice that will drive the country of the current economic quagmire. This will result in CAP mobilizing communities to demonstrate against the bad elements of governance and against poverty for the power to govern is derived not from plush offices but it is derived from the people. The sensible thing a reasonable government can do is to improve and make better the standards of living for people through ending poverty and bringing the economy back on track
….. Zimbabwe cannot continue to operate as if it is on autopilot and the economy cannot continue to be run like a school tuck-shop, it is irresponsible to disregard the suffering of millions of people, change can be slow and ponderous and at times tiresome but when thing come to a head it can be sudden and cataclysmic and things are coming to a head.