Daniel Chigundu

CASH DEMAND IS UNAVOIDABLE IN ZIMBABWE HON. CHIGUMBU: The Minister introduced such a measure, which I think is going to disadvantage a lot of people who are formally participating in the economic activities of this country. My issue is with the Minister; why not say, in the same view, he comes up with measures that clearly protect civil servants or the people who are getting their salaries through formal means? I understand there is a time when the Hon. Minister said this measure was put for the purposes of discouraging people to always want to use cash. Now, Hon. Speaker, there is no way that a formally employed person can avoid using cash because in other areas where they want to pay for services, they must do so using cash. We do not have any platform or mechanism at the moment that compels every other player to accept or to make sure that they accept, whether it is a swipe or cash. For example, I raised an issue last time and he did not clearly respond to that issue. If you go to most of the shops that are being operated by foreigners, I do not want to single out the most culprit foreigners; they do not accept swipe and ZWG, they only go for cash. A formally employed person has no option, Hon. Speaker. They will have to go and withdraw cash first, so that they can go and pay for a certain service because there is no framework to protect them from saying, if you want to pay cash, whether you go to a Chinese shop or an Indian shop, you just go there and pay using your card. If I am to get my USD280 as a Member of Parliament, I will have to withdraw it, Hon. Speaker, so that I will be able to go and buy a solar panel from a Chinese shop because they do not accept swipes, they only accept cash. He is saying, he is doing that to make sure people are discouraged from using cash but at the end of the day, people then have no choice. They will need to use cash because that is the system that is currently there. He has to address that in this Bill, so that people have the option to say, No, if I cannot withdraw cash, then I should just use my card to pay for whatever service that I want.Lastly, Hon. Speaker, I want to say, this budget that has been presented by the Minister, for me, is a tax budget. He is only focusing on taking, taking, taking from the people. I do not know how to put this across, but it seems the Minister is so obsessed with taking money from the citizens. There is no mechanism that has been put in place to protect the citizens

Hon. Togarepi: Government or the Minister of Local Government or our Portfolio Committee should do a site visit on the cooperatives to check and investigate why people are being evicted after 20 years of staying in these council approved stands. Such corrupt practices within our councils should come to an end. I thank you.

HON. PUPURAYI TOGAREPI WANTS EVICTIONS IN URBAN AREAS INVESTIGATED HON. TOGAREPI: I met a lot of people who were allocated stands, built their homes and they have been staying there for 20 years. In those cities, they are receiving eviction letters despite paying rates.