THE European Union (EU) yesterday urged Parliament to take the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) Amendment Bill back to the people for further consultation because some of its provisions would restrict freedoms of civic society organisations in the country.
Outgoing EU head of delegation, Timo Olkkonen said this yesterday when he paid a courtesy call on Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda.
After a closed meeting, Olkkonen told journalists that the EU was concerned about some oppressive laws that the country is crafting, including the PVOs Amendment Bill.
AT least 87 percent of Zimbabwean households in both urban and rural areas own mobile phones, a latest study by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) has revealed.
The government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa says Camilla Nielsson’s documentary, which examines evidence of voting fraud during Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections, has the “potential to incite violence.” Calling the ban “a devastating blow to freedom of the press in Zimbabwe” the filmmakers filed a legal challenge to the decision with Zimbabwe’s constitutional court but, they reported Monday, it was rejected.
BULAWAYO City Council’s tight 48-hour water-rationing schedule has seen residents of the city’s Pumula South suburb going for two months with dry taps. A water activist, Samantha Kahari, said she had engaged BCC to provide water bowsers to Pumula South to avert a disease outbreak.
ZIMBABWE has recorded a 20% increase in school dropouts since 2020 when schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report by the Union of Education Norway in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta) has revealed.
The report follows a similar one conducted by the United States Embassy in 2021, which said an estimated 840 000 schoolchildren quit school since 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak.
There are fears that Zimbabwe’s debt strategy would be meaningless if authorities fail to fully implement political and economic reforms that are expected by creditors and the international community, the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) has said.
IF it is, indeed, true that Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi dribbled the country’s civil society organisations (CSOs) by completely ignoring their contributions to the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) Amendment Bill, it would be most unfortunate.
We also hear that even contributions from the grassroots, which were collected during the parliamentary committee outreach programmes, may also have been excluded during the drafting process, meaning that Parliament’s efforts were most probably a mere waste of time and national resources.
AT least 22 women are raped daily in Zimbabwe with an average of one rape taking place per 75 minutes translating to an average of 646 women being violated each month, according to the Zimbabwe Gender Commission.
“The cases are under reported actually, this is largely because of religious and also cultural issues that are affecting this underreported. In our culture, a lot of cases are taking place and what happens is that the perpetrators are protected within the family units so there is a challenge there.”
According to a 2020 publication on Criminal Law and Sexual Violence in Zimbabwe, many national laws, Zimbabwe included, fail to be gender neutral.
The Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) Amendment Bill passed the second reading without any objections as opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) legislators skipped Parliament sessions. Members of the public that evening criticised the ruling ZANU PF for “ambushing” CCC legislators and fast-tracking the second reading of the Bill in the National Assembly.