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Government is in the process of distributing food to drought-affected areas, but the majority of villagers will be expected to travel tens of kilometres to the centre where the food will be dropped off because their areas are inaccessible due to the poor state of the roads

Lloyd Gumbo Mr Speaker, Sir

In all fairness, if they were to display the zeal they exhibited while debating the diplomatic passports issue on rural roads construction and maintenance, not many rural areas would still be having dusty roads.

Travelling in a hired bus with MPs last week during a tour of Chiadzwa by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment exposed some MPs for who they really are.

It was refreshing to see MPs experiencing the life of ordinary people, better still villagers, when they travelled in the bus and being exposed to the dust.

Mr Speaker Sir, what perplexed the majority of those who are not MPs was seeing some of our representatives running away from their seats and covering their mouths and noses from the dust.

Ironically, the majority of the MPs who were moaning about the dust represent rural constituencies where there are dusty roads, some of them impossible to drive on or travel.

They seemed not to have a conscience whatsoever that those who voted them into Parliament breathe and inhale that dust on a daily basis.

There are lessons to be learnt from the behaviour of some of these MPs that should be noted.

First, it goes without saying that Members of Parliament insist on being given air-conditioned big cars that can withstand dusty roads in the country and are able to retain their comfort even on bumpy dust roads.

But in the case of villagers in most areas of the country, there really is no alternative.

They have to travel in “chicken” buses that have no air-conditioner, sit on wooden seats and shattered window panes.

Whenever the bus hits a hump or a pothole, the whole bus is filled with dust.

Villagers have to travel on these bumpy, dusty roads with transport fares costing an arm and a leg even for short distances yet they have no sustainable source of livelihood.

Every time they disembark from the bus, one would be forgiven for thinking that they had just come from a grinding mill as their bodies are covered with dust.

All this is as a result of poor road infrastructure in rural areas where some places have become inaccessible to the extent that villagers walk up to 15km to the next bus stop.

The fact that MPs, the majority of them rural representatives, reacted to the dust that found its way into the bus exposed them for who they really are.

These are people’s representatives who could not stand the dust for about one hour only yet their constituents are subjected to the same problem for years and long distances.

In some constituencies, MPs were last seen when they were campaigning to be voted into Parliament.

They even went to the extent of promising the constituents that once voted into Parliament they would ensure that all the roads were tarred or at least graded to make their areas accessible.

Some of the promises go as far back as 1980 but up to now no such road has been constructed despite the incumbents having been re-elected since the first elections in independent Zimbabwe.

Mr Speaker Sir, this must be a wake- up call to MPs that the conditions which they were uncomfortable with are taken by their constituents as normal.

If one were to go to any rural constituency and ask people their priority area for development, road infrastructure will be right at the top.

This is what people want and deserve, so it is important that legislators push the executive to ensure that the country’s rural roads are catered for.

Some of the rural roads have gone for years without being graded, pathways have now been turned into roads, all because Government has not prioritised that area.

Mr Speaker Sir, people in the rural areas deserve better road infrastructure so that they can also access basic services.

For example, Government is in the process of distributing food to drought-affected areas, but the majority of villagers will be expected to travel tens of kilometres to the centre where the food will be dropped off because their areas are inaccessible due to dilapidated roads.

Secondly, Mr Speaker Sir, the same MPs who found the roads bumpy and dusty come from a Parliament where they collectively demanded that they should be given diplomatic passports.

They want diplomatic passports for use when they travel outside the country.

The MPs appear to be more interested in improving their lives while ignoring the majority of those who made them what they are today.

In all fairness, if they were to display the zeal they exhibited while debating the diplomatic passports issue on rural roads construction and maintenance, not many rural areas would still be having dusty roads.

But what it goes to show is that MPs are interested in themselves alone and little about the people who voted for them.

The anger they displayed while debating the issue about diplomatic passports was out of this world yet they have remained quiet about rural roads that play a critical role in rural trading that leads to rural development.

The third point is the fact that MPs experienced this inconvenience of bumpy and dusty roads in an area where diamond mining has been taking place for the last seven years.

Mr Speaker Sir, no development can take place if Government does not take the initiative to cause development of areas where extraction of resources is happening.

While Corporate Social Responsibility has been embraced as a way of developing local areas, companies do not feel obligated to develop those areas.

It is therefore critical that development of communities in areas where there is resource extraction must be imposed by Government to ensure communities benefit.

For instance, the companies that were mining diamonds in Chiadzwa have been barred for continuing with their operations yet the majority of the dust roads are as bad as they found them, if not worse.

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