Zanu-PF clueless, say MDC-T

MDC-T yesterday said it would, before the end of this year, hold an emergency stakeholders' meeting to save the economy from "clueless" Zanu-PF.

The opposition party warned that the economy was sliding back to the pre-2009 era, saying the ruling Zanu-PF party had failed to tame the tide.

MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora told NewsDay that they were also planning a National People's Convention to re-connect with the founders of the party.

Mwonzora said: "Zanu-PF is clueless on how to tackle these problems and we need to see how this situation can be handled."

He accused Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo of wanting to create another Murambatsvina.

"As we speak, there is another Murambatsvina in the making in Chitungwiza. (Ignatius) Chombo (Local Government minister) wants to victimise citizens. He is talking of displacing people now when the rainy season has started. We are not worried who these people voted for in the elections, but we believe it is sadistic especially since these people are not being relocated elsewhere. Zanu-PF was behind some of those settlements before the elections and what is happening is behaving as if people are expendable. "

Mwonzora said a working committee had been set up to organise the dates and logistics for the two meetings.

"We will get the details on Wednesday, but the principle of holding the meetings has been agreed on," Mwonzora said.

"The MDC is a movement. We want to hear from our stakeholders on the way forward in view of the fact that as a nation, we are fast sliding into an economic crisis. The signs are there. There is little disposable income, no medicines in our hospitals and in some rural health centres, there is not even a pain killer."

At least 700 000 were left homeless in 2005 when the government demolished slum dwellings under an urban clean-up exercise code-named Operation Murambatsvina.

However, Zanu-PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa scoffed at the MDC-T allegations, describing the charges of an economic meltdown as "wishful thinking".

Mutasa said: "It is very interesting. The position of the MDC-T has always been the same. Within the short period after the elections, they are already seeing the economy backwards. They don't see the illegal sanctions which they brought against the country sliding the country backwards, sliding the economy backwards. As Zanu-PF, we have an economic blueprint to get the economy out of the situation it is in, to make it better.

"We are fortunate that MDC-T is no longer in government and that is why it is saying those things now."

Chombo last week warned that government would demolish houses built illegally on undesignated land in Harare, Chitungwiza and elsewhere, adding that the programme could be replicated throughout the country.

In its election manifesto, Zanu-PF pledged to create more than two million jobs in the next five years, but has rescinded its position citing the sanctions regime which the United Sates and the European Union have maintained.

Zanu-PF said it has come up with the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation blue-print to counter problems the country was facing, but has largely kept the document under wraps with ministers giving the public snippets of the policy before it was officially launched.

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa recently returned from the International Monetary Fund in Washington, United States, empty-handed after the multi-lateral institution insisted that Zimbabwe sticks to its debt repayment plan before asking for new money.

Zimbabwe's external debt stands at about $10,7 billion.

Among Zimbabwe's creditors are the World Bank ($976,45 million), IMF ($127,4 million), European Investment Bank ($244 million) and $587 million owed to the African Development Bank.