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Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
GREAT Zimbabwe University’s Robert Mugabe School of Education has started working towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals through keeping Masvingo City and its environs clean.

Speaking on the sidelines of a clean-up campaign in the CBD during the weekend, a senior lecturer Professor Shumirai Nyota said the idea behind cleaning the cities was part of UNESCO’s objective towards having clean environment as a way of protecting their inhabitants from disease outbreaks, among other challenges.

She said the university also took part in sustainable workshops held recently in Zambia where clean-up campaign exercises were considered as having immense contributions to the success of SDGs.

“UNESCO has tasked teachers throughout the world, including in Zimbabwe, to promote SDGs through keeping the environment clean,” said Prof Nyota. “It is against this background that GZU’s Robert Mugabe School of Education has embarked on a massive clean-up campaign.”

Prof Nyota added: “We have launched our Sustainable Development initiative today, October 21. We will be cleaning business centres from time to time and we have roped in both students and lecturers.”

Prof Nyota said the university was working with the city and the Environmental Management Agency in making sure that Masvingo afforded pollution free air through a clean environment.

“We want to applaud the city and EMA for assisting us in our endeavor to keep the city clean,” she said. “We have been provided with brooms, bins and a refuse truck to collect the litter that we gather. We are happy with such a symbiotic relationship.”

City mayor Councillor Hubert Fidze, who also took part in the clean-up exercise, praised GZU for such a noble initiative of keeping the city clean.

“We have Kigali in Rwanda and Windhoek in Namibia, which were rated as the cleanest cities in Africa,” he said.

“Masvingo would thrive to do even more in terms of our anti-litter campaign.”

Clr Fidze took the opportunity to advise female students to go for breast and cervical cancer screening.

“I advise you all female students to be screened for breast and cervical cancer at health institutions dotted around the city,” he said. “Cancer is a dangerous non-communicable disease, but the more it is detected earlier the better.”

The other group of GZU students was also raising awareness on breast cancer through a clean-up campaign at different sites in the town.

October is breast cancer awareness month.