The Sunday News
NATIONAL Housing and Social Amenities Minister Hon Daniel Garwe has appealed to the Hwange community to intensify its infrastructural development projects so as to guard against turning into a ghost town.
Minister Garwe said there was a need for concerted efforts by all stakeholders to ensure that Hwange does not face a similar fate as other mining areas, which became ghost towns after economic activities that supported them were depleted. He said this while addressing various stakeholders during his tour of Hwange District recently.
“In certain areas we have mining villages that were created due to mining activities. The mines have since been closed but people are still there, sadly there are no social amenities,” said Minister Garwe.
He said the number of mining areas under threat of becoming ghost towns in the country were on the increase.
“We are aware of such (mining) areas, the majority of them have developed or grown into ghost towns. Kamativi is one of them, Mhangura is yet another. There are so many of them dotted throughout the country and Hwange shouldn’t be one of them,” said Minister Garwe.
Other examples of areas, which have been reduced into ghost towns are Alaska, Shamrock, Gath’s Mine in Mashava and Mvuma. Production at the mines folded over the past few years owing to viability problems, leaving communities with no source of livelihood. He said there was a need to modernise the country’s infrastructure premised on Government’s Urban Renewal Project initiative and its vision of attaining an upper-middle economy by 2030. Government has made a commitment to transform local cities under a Smart Zimbabwe blueprint which is expected to turn local urban areas into smart cities that use information communication technologies.
“We need to urbanise and modernise those (mining) areas so that we develop, sticking to President Mnangagwa’s vision of ensuring that Zimbabwe attains an upper middle-economy by 2030 . . . ,” said Minister Garwe.
He lamented the housing and social amenities at Hwange Colliery Company Limited’s compounds describing them as dehumanising and skewed to the colonial era. The minister was making reference to the coal mining giant’s shared communal ablution facilities.
“Here we have a situation where several families share one ablution block that alone dehumanises people. It takes away the human dignity, which is well enshrined in our constitution as a human right, that’s one housing station we (Government) are looking at,” he said.
Hwange Local Board (HLB) town secretary Pastor Ndumiso Mdlalose emphasised on the need to effectively implement the Urban Renewal initiative as a springboard to attract investment. He further noted that delays in incorporating seven of the 14 wards in Hwange urban under the local authority’s administration was stifling the District’s economic growth.
“As a town we need the seven wards to be incorporated into HLB to allow for better planning, which goes beyond coal mining. We are an industrial town with mining and tourism activities. As it is Devolution funds can’t reach the concession area wards and this retards development,” said Pastor Mdlalose.
HLB chairman Councillor Nqobile Ocean Mabhena said over reliance on one economic activity was the first threat to Hwange’s demise in future.
“That’s why we have always been saying we don’t want to be associated with one economic activity, which is coal mining. If you look at Kamativi it was all about tin mining. Once tin lost its value on the international market, Kamativi started collapsing,” he said. — Hwange Newsletter.
