The Sunday News
Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
A SOUTH African pharmaceutical and logistics company, T2N has reached out to 38 000 people in Gauteng, mainly in Johannesburg and Pretoria, a majority of whom being undocumented migrants who have not been able to get help through the formal channels.
Those that were assisted include informal traders, people living in informal settlements and it is understood that 35 percent of those people are foreign nationals, mainly Zimbabweans.
Though the actual number of Zimbabweans in need of food assistance in South Africa is yet to be ascertained more than 6 000 have registered with the Embassy in Pretoria and other migrant groups.
In a telephone interview, T2N’s site executive, Mr Thandani Nkomo Zidwe said they have partnered with the Gauteng Food Security Committee to reach out to the 9 500 families made up of 38 000 people.
“In terms of the communities we have worked with you will find that even without the impact of Covid-19, the undocumented immigrants within this country, especially those without local identity pariculars will be vulnerable and are not able to be assisted by local Social Welfare programmes,” said Mr Zidwe.
“Those people, in addition to the locals who were also adversely affected because of this pandemic, had to be covered. Sadly, the disease knows no boundaries or whether one has an ID or not. So in the community we went we found the undocumented people whom we assisted with food hampers since the start of the lockdown in March.
These include nationals from West Africa, Mozambique, Malawians, Zambians and a large contingent of Zimbabweans. In fact, it was a broad spectrum of people and the undocumented most of them are left out of most programmes because of their immigration status. Our target as an organisation is to have social programmes covering at least 36 percent of these migrants.”
He said they waived the ID requirements from the beneficiaries to ensure that they widened their social security net.
The official said they had given out 232.8 tonnes of food and essentials to ease the sting of the lockdown on child-headed homes, orphaned children, gender-based violence victims and migrants.
Ms Patience Sibanda, a mother of two who lives in Alexander and is employed as a domestic worker said; “This was the first time we received aid since lockdown started in March. We’ve not been able to work since March and things have really been difficult. We’re so grateful that they chose to also give us the food packages as foreigners. Many Zimbabweans who literally had nothing also received the food parcels,” she said.
According to Ms Angie Mzamindo of the Golden Harvest Seventh Day Adventist, who leads the Community Services Department of the church, some people were skeptical to register for the aid, but after persuasion they acceded to giving out their details.
