Pretoria – Zimbabwe’s government has been criticised for failing to urgently assist families in flood-prone areas of the country before and after flash floods last week, the private-owned NewsDay newspaper reported.
It said Binga North legislator Prince Dubeko Sibanda of the opposition MDC Alliance accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of taking too long to intervene in his affected constituency.
The floods killed one person in Binga, a district on the south eastern shore of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province, leaving more than 30 families displaced. The department of civil protection only came to the affected families’ aid several days later.
“I do not want to say that the government has not done anything to help nor do I want to say they did much better things for other places that are flood prone. The thing that’s bothering me is the fact that the government took their time to act towards this sad situation,” Sibanda told NewsDay, saying it took government officials almost a week to come to the rescue of marooned families.
“I am aware that they went to the ground and that they took bags of maize to Binga. Yes, we do appreciate that, but they just brought maize which needs to be processed into mealie-meal and it is going to be time consuming. Our government is too slow.”