Police in the Zimbabwean capital Harare have rounded up more than 10 000 squatters and street children and plan to send them to rural areas, reports said on Monday.
Under a fresh clean-up operation codenamed Round-Up, the police netted 10 224 people, many of them vagrants, touts and what the authorities call ”disorderly elements”, said the state-controlled Herald newspaper.
”We are going to relocate some of the vagrants and street children to their homes,” said police spokesperson Munyaradzi Musariri.
News of the new clean-up comes almost exactly one year after President Robert Mugabe’s government launched its controversial Operation Murambatsvina, which saw the demolition of thousands of shacks and cottages in towns and cities across the country.
The United Nations said at least 700 000 people had been left homeless and jobless by that campaign — a figure disputed by the Zimbabwe authorities.
Despite a much-vaunted follow-up operation called ”Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle”, or ”Live Well”, meant to provide a better life to those whose homes or shops were destroyed, tens of thousands were still living in makeshift homes at various locations across the country.
Mugabe said at the country’s 26th independence celebrations last month that 3 325 houses were completed and allocated to beneficiaries last year under the first phase of Operation Garikai.
He said the rebuilding project would continue with local authorities providing plots for people to build their own houses.
But the majority of the victims of the demolitions lack the means and materials to build their own houses.
Civic groups say the reconstruction effort, launched the day a United Nations envoy arrived in Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian impact of the crackdown, was ”piecemeal” and hastily embarked upon.
According to the Herald, police say street children and vagrants are responsible for many of the crimes committed in the Zimbabwean capital, once nicknamed the Sunshine City.
”As police, we will not rest until there is sanity in the streets and the operation is continuing,” Musariri said.
Operation Round-Up was launched on April 12 — just ahead of the onset of winter. – Sapa-DPA