Staff Reporter
CHIREDZI –Rural District Council’s ward 27 people are walking close to 60km to the nearest health facility that is Chiredzi General Hospital.
This was revealed by the ward’s councilor Martin Marufu during the commissioning of two classroom blocks at Monyoroka Primary School.
Marufu said they welcomed the assistance they got for school development and now their major worry as a community is the issue of health facilities.
“We are happy that we now have a school, our main priority now is on health facilities. We don’t have a clinic or government health care center in our ward. The nearest government health center we have is Chiredzi General Hospital which is plus or minus 60km from the ward. We lose a lot of lives because people have no money to travel when they get sick.
“We have Cholera and Malaria outbreaks here and lose a lot of lives because of that so our major challenge is of health care and we are appealing to government for help. The community is ready to provide manpower but we don’t have the resources,” said Marufu.
He went on to say they also had water challenges as they used to rely on small dams in the area which have now succumbed to siltation.
“We also have water challenges and we are calling for the responsible authorities to intervene. We need boreholes here. The area used to have small dams since it was Tongaat’s cattle ranch. So the dams were fed with canals from Tongaat but they have since closed them down. Now the dams are full of silt,” he said.
He said the school was necessitated by the situation they were facing since they could not enroll pupils at Mutirikwi Primary School because the school is overwhelmed by mainly Tongaat employees’ children.
“We could not enroll our pupils at Mutirikwi especially Early Childhood Development (ECD) and grade one because the school was overwhelmed. Now we have our own and we are expecting more than 400 pupils from infant to grade four when we open,” he added.
The school blocks were constructed using Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and devolution funds with the community providing labor.
