The late Cyril Chitumba

…as man gets murdered at drinking joint 

Brighton Chiseva

ZAKA – Despite the country
being under a level 4 Covid-19 national lockdown which among other things, puts
in place a dusk to dawn curfew and prohibits bars from operating, bar owners
keep flaunting the regulations with one incident turning tragic when a reveler
was gruesomely murdered at Simbamukaka bar in Jerera yesterday.

A
25-year-old Cyril Chitumba was beaten to death at the illegally operating bar
in the early morning hours of February 2, 2021 over a missing Samsung Galaxy
A30 smartphone.

Chitumba
was allegedly assaulted by Gladman Marufu from Chinoda village under chief
Nhema and Kudzai Siyawareva who were accusing him of stealing a cellphone belonging
to latter.

The
deceased is alleged to have been drinking with colleagues at the bottle store where
they were being served liquor through the windows and the back doors.

Masvingo
provincial police spokesperson Inspector Kudakwashe Dhehwa confirmed the
incident saying people should observe curfew regulations and bars should remain
closed.

“The
police are investigating a murder case which happened at Jerera Growth Point
yesterday.

“The
murder happened way after curfew hours at a bar which should have never opened
under the current lockdown level,” said Dhehwa.

Sources
say that Chitumba breathed his last at around 0300 hours and the police, who
were not at base when people sought help, came at around 0600 hours and
attended the scene.

 “They accused him of stealing a cell phone.
They assaulted him using bricks all over his body and later stabbed him with an
unidentified sharp object. He sustained bodily injuries and a serious wound
near one of his eyes,” said one source.

Onlookers
who included sex workers alerted the deceased’s brother and his mother, who is
a police constabulary based in Jerera, who rushed to the scene.

“His
mother arrived at the scene and tried to intervene but was booted and assaulted
before she rushed to the police base housed at Jerera Community Hall but could
not find any officer,” said another source.

The
deceased’s mother is said to have pleaded with the accused persons to stop but
they demanded cash, a cow and later demanded a car which they were offered by
the bar owner but they turned down saying they wanted to kill him.

“The
deceased’s mother asked them to leave him and offered them money but they
refused saying they wanted a cow. She called other relatives whom she wanted to
bring the cow but they said they now wanted a car.

“The
bar owner Takunda Mupindu offered them his car keys but they turned down the
offer saying they wanted him dead,” said the source.

People
lamented the limited number of police presence in the growth point and said two
officers who are usually posted on night duty at the base barely spend the
night there making it hard for locals to report during the night.

The
accused persons have since been arrested and await to appear in court tomorrow,
February 4.

Tawanda Gozo

TellZim Reporter

City of
Masvingo acting town clerk engineer Edward Mukaratirwa, who was instructed by
the special full council meeting last Friday to serve city engineer Tawanda
Gozo with a suspension letter today (Monday, February 1) pending an
investigation into his conduct, has said that he is still weighing the options.

Mukaratirwa
said that he will not rush to make a decision without carefully considering all
the other routes available.

“A
recommendation was made by the special full council on Friday last week to the
effect that our engineer (Gozo) should be suspended.

“The
recommendation was presented to my office and I am still putting into play
other considerations. We do not want to make a hasty decision without considering
other options which may be available to us.

“We
would like to see if there are no other options other than suspension but at
the end of the day we need to make a decision that is best for the council,”
said Mukaratirwa.

He said
he would have considered all the options by Wednesday and the public will be
made aware.

The
recommendation to suspend Gozo comes against the background of gross
incompetence in the city’s engineering department.

City of
Masvingo mayor Collen Maboke told TellZim News that Gozo stands accused of
gross incompetence and they registered their displeasure to Mukaratirwa.

Maboke said
he once engaged Mukaratirwa and Gozo over the deterioration of service delivery
in the city and the engineer did not heed the advice.

“What
we did was register our displeasure over the conduct of Gozo to his immediate
supervisor, Mukaratirwa.

“Service
delivery has deteriorated under Gozo’s watch and I once engaged him on the
matter but it seems he did not listen. Mukaratirwa was in that meeting as well.

“So
what the special full council meeting did was to recommend for an investigation
by Mukaratirwa and if Gozo is found guilty, he will face disciplinary action
guided by Section 140 of the Urban Councils Act,” said Maboke.

He said
Gozo committed a serious crime of incompetence which warranted dismissal but
said it is at the discretion of Mukaratirwa to suspend him pending an
investigation or keep him on the job while being investigated.

“Gozo
has no sense of urgency. Recently the city received dirty water from the taps
and it took Gozo the whole day to look into the matter. Look at our roads,
drainage, water, sewer and refuse collection. These have deteriorated to unprecedented
levels and all fall under the authority of Gozo.

“Though
the flaws are all there for everyone to see, protocol says that an
investigation has to be made. It is up to Mukaratirwa to suspend Gozo pending
an investigation or investigate him while on the job,” said Maboke.

Masvingo
United Residents and Ratepayers Alliance (Murra) director said that if the
council has sufficient evidence to suspend Gozo they should do so as long as it
improves service delivery.

Muguti,
however, warned the council against playing politics with service delivery
saying residents have not been receiving any meaningful service from the local authority.

“What
we are against is using Gozo as a scapegoat to hide their own flaws. Residents have
not been receiving services from council for a long time and our thinking is
that the whole council is incompetent.

“There
is need to suspend all incompetent people at council and not play politics with
service delivery,” said Muguti.

…Masvingo apologises for discoloured water mess

TellZim Reporter

City of Masvingo has responded to
reports that one of their employees in the Engineering Department mishandled
its tank and pipe cleaning exercise leading to the recent pumping of near sludge
water to households, TellZim can report.

In a public notice dated January
28, 2021, the city promised that it was addressing the source of the problem
but stopped short of disclosing finer details.

“The City of Masvingo regrets the
supply of discoloured tap water which is brownish in colour. We are in the
process of addressing the source of the problem and we trust we will be through
by Sunday morning the 31^st of January 2021.

“Any inconvenience caused is
deeply regretted,” the city communicated.

The notice followed an earlier
report by TellZim to the effect that the muddy water was a result of a maintenance
work debacle at the main reservoirs above Target Kopje when a staff member ‘mistakenly’
released clean water into a tank which was still getting cleaned.

To avoid enormous losses, the
water, which had gathered a lot of grit and mud, was pumped into households,
leading to the consumption of water of most probably the worst quality ever
seen in the history of the city.

“There was a mistake when water
was opened into one of the reserve tanks before the cleaning work had been
completed. This is the water which was coming out of the taps during the past
week,” a source told TellZim.

The initial story can be read on this link.

https://tellzim.com/2021/01/sludge-in-taps.html

… Msv
tanks, pipes cleaning gone wrong

Wayne
Ncube

Very
poor-quality water like never seen before began coming out of taps in Masvingo
this week after council announced a rare cleaning exercise at the city’s water reservoirs
and some supply pipes.

In many
suburbs, extremely dirty water which was filled with sludge and unfit even for
laundry came out of the taps for four days.

Some
sources privy to the cleaning exercise told TellZim News that a council
employee had either mistakenly or negligently let thousands of litres of clean
water into one of the tanks which was still being cleaned, and council was left
with no option but to pump the sludge into homes to avoid losses.

City of
Masvingo announced that it was going to clean the water reservoirs over Target
Kopje suburb, and the main supply pipes from the Bushmead Water Works in order
to boost water quality but little did residents know that they were to grapple
with sludge coming out of their taps.

A
source from the city council said water was pumped into one of the tanks before
the cleaning exercise had been completed.

“There
was a mistake when water was opened into one of the reserve tanks before the
cleaning work had been completed. This is the water which was coming out of the
taps during the past week,” said the source.

City of
Masvingo engineer Tawanda Gozo said he had expected the quality of water to
revert back to normalcy much earlier than what was reported to have happened in
such suburbs as Rujeko C.

“We
recently cleaned our main water pipes from Bushmead Water Works and the reserve
tanks to improve water quality.

“We
have received reports that in some areas extremely dirty water was coming out
from the taps but that was most probably due to the normal cleaning exercise.

“The
water quality should have improved earlier and I am surprised to be told that
it is a different case in some places. We are ready to investigate,” said Gozo.

Masvingo’s
daily water demand has risen to about 50 megalitres a day while the council has
a pumping capacity of around 30 megalitres.

The
city is struggling to give consistent water supplies and this has made basic home
hygiene more difficult at a time when Covid-19 infections

Margaret Kamwemvura’s destroyed house

Cephas Shava

MWENEZI – A 60-year-old widow is appealing for any form of
assistance after her house was recently gutted by fire which destroyed all her
meagre assets, TellZim News can report.

Margaret Kamwemvura, of village
10 Liburgia under Chief Neshuro, lost her belongings on January 25 after a
cellphone which was on charge exploded and sparked an inferno which consumed
the house.

A teary Kamwemvura told TellZim that
the devastating accident occurred when she had left the homestead to work on
the fields.

“One of my sons left his
phone charging with a universal charger so it seems the battery exploded and
caused the fire. We had left home for the fields when the accident occurred and
we were only alerted about the fire after we had seen thick smoke blowing from the
direction of our homestead.

“We then got home to find that
everything had been destroyed and nothing was recovered including my cellphone
which I had left inside the house,” said Kamwemvura.

The elderly woman and her family had
to spend the night at a relative’s place and she has begun appealing for assistance
from government and well-wishers.

“All our entire belongings
were destroyed as this was our only house that sheltered everything for us. We
are only left with the clothes on our bodies and nothing else,” added
Kamwemvura.

Kamwemvura lives with her two
unemployed sons and she can be contacted on her grandchild Prince Hove’s mobile
number 0777111013.

Clayton Shereni

MASVINGO –
Though correctional facilities in the country have come up with measures to
limit prison visits to outsiders as a preventive measure against the novel
coronavirus, the pandemic seems to have found its way into the ‘over crowded’
Mutimurefu prison cells where latest tests show that 78 inmates have tested
positive to Covid-19.

Masvingo
provincial Covid-19 taskforce spokesperson, Rodgers Irimayi, said contrary to
some claims that 110 inmates at Mutimurefu prison had tested positive to the
virus, only 78 cases had been recorded with isolation procedures having been
put in place to curb the spread.

“So
far recorded positive cases at Mutimurefu prison stand at 78 only as at January
27. I don’t know where the inflated figures are coming from. There are reports
that 110 inmates had tested positive to Covid-19 but that is not true.

“I
even called officials at Mutimurefu today (January 27) and the cases haven’t
increased. The 78 are all inmates and they are isolating with the help of
prison health officers,” said Irimayi.

Zimbabwe
Prisons Correctional Services (ZPCS) Masvingo Public Relations Officer,
Stanslous Sanike said there are cells specifically designated for inmates who
test positive to the virus.

“We
have tested quite a number of inmates and those that have tested positive are
isolating and being treated as per symptom in cells which have been
specifically reserved for Covid-19 cases.

“In
Chiredzi we also have an isolation centre for inmates who test positive,” said
Sanike.

Commenting
on the issue of dealing with severe cases and overcrowded cells, Sanike said
they work in liaison with health officials but declined to reveal the total
number of inmates citing security reasons.

“If
we record a severe case we will always liaise with hospitals through the
Provincial Medical Director (PMD) but we are yet to record a severe case where
a patient needs oxygen support.

“As
for the capacity and the total number of inmates who are currently at
Mutimurefu, I am not authorized to give you the figures for security reasons
but prisoners are not overcrowded in cells,” said Sanike. 

Mutimurefu
prison has a capacity of 800 inmates but is reportedly accommodating inmates
who surpass its carrying capacity.