President Robert Mugabe told top United Nations humanitarian envoy Jan Egeland that Zimbabweans are not ”tents people”, after the world body offered temporary shelters to thousands displaced by a wave of shack demolitions, the state-run Herald reported on Wednesday.
”We are not a tents people. We believe in houses,” presidential spokesperson George Charamba quoted Mugabe as saying.
Egeland, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, was on a three-day visit to Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian situation after the government’s demolitions campaign — dubbed Operation Restore Order — that left up to 700 000 homeless and jobless.
He said there had been ”disagreements” after he met Mugabe on Tuesday.
The Zimbabwean president rejected a UN offer of temporary shelter for those who are still living out in the open, accusing the world body of employing double standards, the Herald said.
”The government is saying what the poor and homeless require is a long-term solution,” the presidential spokesperson said.
”The world body was employing double standards as it was building permanent structures in Darfur, Sudan and Zambia yet it wanted to put up tents in Zimbabwe for those displaced during the clean-up exercise,” Charamba was quoted as saying.
Speaking to reporters late on Tuesday after visiting victims of the clean-up in Harare and Bulawayo, Egeland said the campaign was ”the worst possible thing” to hit Zimbabwe.
Mugabe says Murambatsvina was necessary to bring order to Zimbabwe’s dilapidated towns and cities. His government says it has launched an ambitious housing programme but it is being hampered by lack of cash, fuel and building materials.
Egeland pointed out urban renewal campaigns were usually only done ”when you have better housing available”.
The UN envoy said church leaders in Bulawayo told him that ”thousands and thousands and thousands” of people were living in sub-standard accommodation as a result of the campaign.
A combination of food shortages, high rates of HIV and lack of shelter in Zimbabwe were creating a ”very serious” humanitarian situation, Egeland said.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is expected to provide emergency food aid to more than three million rural Zimbabweans by next January.
Egeland said an appeal of $276-million had been launched to assist Zimbabwe with food aid and to improve its health, shelter, sanitation and agricultural needs. – Sapa-DPA