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Business Reporter  

The Social Protection Forum for Zimbabwe has commended the Pfumvudza programme and says the church should participate in such initiatives to compliment Government in increasing agriculture production and boost food security and economic growth.

Such initiatives help reduce poverty, social inequalities in communities while empowering local communities through economic projects.

The forum’s chairperson, Reverend Gift Chanakira, said faith-based organisations have for years played a critical role in complimenting the Government in education — building schools across the country as well as healthcare facilities, a phenomena not unique to Zimbabwe alone but across the region. Others have also come up with economic empowerment projects to encourage self-sustainability at household and community level.

“We would like to thank the Government of Zimbabwe for coming up with a set of interventions whose objective is to close the poverty gap of poverty.

“As the church, we can cite programmes like Pfumvudza, a national programme that is set to score huge success and benefit the generality of Zimbabweans across political divide through enhanced agriculture production.

“We also want to thank God for the rains, this has brought great positive expectations for a bumper harvest in our beloved country.

“It is also our responsibility as churches to compliment Government’s efforts by capacitating faith based actors to take the leading role in improving livelihoods of our respective communities” he said.

He, however, highlighted that churches face challenges in initiating programmes for social protection calling more efforts to capacitate faith based actors so that the church can play a leading role by setting up a support framework and this could essentially include educational, financial and technical assistance.

Currently churches are playing an active role in the fight against Covid-19 pandemic in addition to social protection.

“We are also promoting linkages with State sponsored programmes for sustainability. Many a times when people visit churches for help, we refer them to Social Welfare yet now we are saying the Church must be visible.

“Currently we are also complementing Government’s efforts in fighting Covid-19 by giving PPEs and hand sanitising dispensers,” said Rev Chanakira.

The Government has emphasised social protection is a priority especially during times of natural disasters and pandemics like the obtaining Covid 19. However, constrained fiscal space is one of the major challenges that stall the Government from meeting its desired targets with faith based organisations and NGOs moving in to cover the gap.