The power of community cannot be overemphasized, when a community pulls its weight to achieve something, there is little to nothing that can stop that thing from coming to fruition. This can be seen in the effort of the Beitbridge West constituency villagers in Whunga, Ward 11. They have started pooling resources together to construct a clinic in the area to address challenges encountered in accessing primary healthcare facilities.

The Deputy Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage, the constituency’s MP, Cde Ruth Maboyi, has joined the community in mobilizing material and manpower. She pointed out the acute shortage of clinics and secondary schools in her constituency, which she is trying to solve by engaging communities that decided to work together to fund key infrastructure development projects at the grassroots level. “The Government is doing its part in enhancing and accelerating infrastructure development countrywide, but as community members, we felt there was a need to be proactive in addressing our challenges with the few resources we can put together,” she said. “So, what we have done is to organize resources to build a clinic in Whunga to minimize the distance villagers are traveling from Dendele, Mazibeli, and Whunga areas to access primary health care facilities at Zezani Growth point”. 

Reporting on the progress, she said that so far, the community which is molding bricks had contributed cement, door frames, and window frames to start the project. She said major civil works were expected to start as soon as they have the requisite quantity of bricks and related materials as advised by building experts. 

They will also use this same model to construct a secondary school in the Muthangamutshena area in Ward 12. “We are going to have such projects in all the wards, where we organize ourselves and make contributions to fund the construction of crucial infrastructure. However, we will continue to seek assistance from Government and its development partners to ensure that we address all the key infrastructure deficiencies in our constituency,” said the Deputy Minister. She pointed out how important it was for Zimbabweans in the diaspora and those within the country to put heads together and complement Government’s efforts to evenly spread economic and infrastructure development nationwide.

Cde Maboyi pointed out the need to build more clinics and schools, both primary and secondary in all the rural wards to improve people’s way of life. She said, “Our idea is to focus on one project at a time, before moving on to other initiatives”. She talked about the bad state of roads which has seen most public transporters pulling off major routes, leaving villagers at the mercy of few private motorists. “Imagine a situation where we have an emergency and one has to be urgently transported to the nearest health facility in a donkey-pulled cart. This is bad business. I have since approached the national leadership at the District Development Fund (DDF) to fix our roads as a matter of urgency,” said the Deputy Minister.

This development comes days after the residents of Beitbridge town undertook to raise R200 000 to fix eight grounded vehicles at the local district hospital in the next three months. Among the vehicles to be fixed by the Friends of Beitbridge Trust, are five ambulances and three service vehicles. So far one of them which is a Mazda B2200 ambulance repaired at a cost of R13 000 has been handed over to the health institution.