Truck driver sends kids to children's home to evade maintenance

BULAWAYO - A cunning truck driver's allegedly sought to avoid spending cash on his kids by sending them to a children's home when they visit him during school holidays but his plans foiled when his estranged wife spilled the bins in court.

Vincent Marasha Marasha dragged his estranged wife Cicilia Phiri to court pleading with magistrate Vivian Ndlovu to discharge the $80 maintenance grant claiming he spends school holidays with the children.

"I don't agree with his application. The reason why he is asking the court to dismiss the money for the school holidays is because he sends our children to a children's home. At Juvenile Court he said he takes them to the home because he is single and here he says that he has a wife who is heavily pregnant," Phiri said.

"I don't want him to take them to the children's home because they come back home injured and he doesn't even bother himself to visit them, he simply waits for the next holiday."

In response, Marasha said when the couple divorced; the court gave him a right to have access to the children during school holidays.

"Your worship I take them to a children's home because the courts recommended I do that if I don't have a maid. Therefore I request that I be exempted from paying $80 every time the children come to visit me," he said.

Marasha added that his children were better off at a children's home than at Phiri's friend's place as that exposed them to growing up ill mannered.

"I'm just a driver getting 25 percent of what I would have realised. This woman and I have a four bed-roomed house in Nketa and she stays in that house with tenants who pay rent. I was arrested for August maintenance default yet the children were with me. I kindly ask the court to take off that debt because they were with me for the whole month," he said.

Marasha further pleaded with the court to reduce the money he was paying as maintenance arguing that Phiri should use the money she was getting from their tenants. Phiri interjected and told the court that Marasha was lying.

Ndlovu dismissed the application saying Marasha did not give valid reasons why he made that application adding that he should let Phiri look after the children if he could not do that himself.