HWANGE: Youths here have threatened to invade some companies including those owned by government for allegedly marginalising them by bringing people from other provinces for casual jobs.
Youths voiced their concerns to Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda who summoned some of the companies to a meeting in Hwange last
week.
The meeting was attended by representatives of companies such as Technosphere, Zimbabwe Power Company, Makomo Resources, South Mining as well as Zesa and Zanu PF provincial leadership.
According to the youths, companies import workers from other provinces especially Harare and Masvingo whenever there were vacancies.
They also accused the firms of ‘disrespecting’ local chiefs by making them provide lists of youths from their areas on the pretext they will get jobs.
The youths threatened to ‘storm’ the companies which they also accused of not doing anything to support communities they operate in.
“You can’t come here to lie. Last week you brought 80 people from Harare and only took five locals. All you do is exploit our resources and do nothing for us. If this doesn’t change we will visit all these companies and you won’t like what we will do,” said Nora Dube, a Zanu PF provincial youth leader.
She was referring to ZPC which had reportedly employed casual labourers.
Mudenda demanded to know why the companies were employing people from elsewhere.
“We summoned you here because we received complaints that you are bringing in loads of people from other areas even for general hand jobs where there are locals who can do such jobs,” he said.
Mudenda said disadvantaging locals from benefiting from their natural resources was a violation of their constitutional right.
“Are you scared of chiefs… you should visit them. That’s what whites would do, they would pay courtesy visits to traditional leaders,” he added.
Chiefs also said the companies would only ask them to provide lists of names but to no avail as none of the locals was being employed.
Over the years, there have been concerns from people of Matabeleland about preferential job placements where people from other provinces are deployed in the western parts of the country at the expense of locals.
Locals have complained that at the end of the day none of the companies do developmental projects in their areas of operation as they take all the profits to their provinces of origin thereby disadvantaging locals.
