Harare – Zimbabwe’s parliament has been urged to offer psychological counselling to stressed MPs and ministers who lost posts in the political upheaval that saw Robert Mugabe finally ousted.
Ex-ministers are among MPs who are suffering from high blood pressure and stress over the loss of their cabinet posts, parliament heard last week, according to New Zimbabwe.com.
“We have had challenges as parliament… whereby we have had people who have been moved from positions and all that and people have gone through a lot of challenges, pressure, stress and blood pressure,” said opposition MDC, Prosper Mutseyami.
Stress and trauma
“As we speak, there are some people who cannot understand why they are in new positions and they do not understand that they are now backbenchers,” he added.
According to the official parliamentary record, Hansard, Mutseyami said the parliament’s clinic needed to offer counselling “to deal with these challenges or these kinds of trauma”.
Speaker of parliament, Jacob Mudenda, agreed saying his cousin had lost a ministerial post “and he became so stressed up that in the end, he could not recover.”
Many ministers perceived to be linked to former first lady Grace Mugabe were sacked in the wake of last month’s military operation that removed Mugabe from power and replaced him with Emmerson Mnangagwa.
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