The Zimbabwe government, facing critical foreign currency shortages, has deployed riot police in the capital Harare to stop illegal street dealing, a newspaper said Saturday.
The state-run Herald said that the police were now on patrol at an international bus terminus in the city centre, which is a haven for illegal money changers.
”We are only chasing them away and the main aim is to curb the illicit dealings especially in the city centre,” police spokesperson Cecilia Churu was quoted as saying.
But the paper said money changers could easily outwit the uniformed police, and plainclothes detectives would have been better.
Zimbabwe is currently in the grips of a chronic shortage of foreign currency needed to buy fuel, food and medicines.
The government blames the crisis on a thriving parallel market for foreign currency, where the US dollar trades for more than seven times the official rate of 824 Zimbabwe dollars to one US.
The presence of riot police at the bus station, which connects Zimbabwe to other countries in the region such as South Africa and Zambia, was giving travellers a bad image of the country, the report said. – Sapa