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Faith Katete-Herald Reporter

More than 500 Mandebvu residents in Mt Hampden are set to receive vaccines against Covid-19 in a joint Seed Co, Cimas and Ministry of Health and Child Care vaccination programme.

This follows calls by the Government for private companies to play a part in the fight against the pandemic.

Seed Co and Cimas have since answered the call and yesterday they started vaccinating residents of Mandebvu who constitute a larger percentage of Seed Co workforce.

The program which targets more than 500 people and is expected to end on Thursday this week.

The Managing director of Seed Co Zimbabwe, Mr Edworks Mhandu, said Seed Co purchased 11 000 doses through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to ensure that all stakeholders including seed growers, neighboring community get vaccinated.

“Seed Co purchased 11 000 doses of Covid-19 vaccinations through the Ministry of Finance Economic and Development, Company employees, key stakeholders who include seed growers, media and neighbouring community of Seed Co at Stapleford are benefiting from the vaccinations.”

“We are happy that the turnout for vaccination has been excellent more than 95 percent of employees have been vaccinated.”

“Government urged the private sector to participate in vaccination programs and we are doing it free of charge to our stakeholders,” said Mr Mhandu.

Ms Marjorie Mutemererwa Seed Co group Public Relations and Communications Manager said Seed Co purchased the vaccines to ensure that the Mandebvu community is safe.

“Most of the mass workers at Seed Co were vaccinated close to 100 percent, however most of the workers that we draw from Mandebvu are not vaccinated, hence we said we need to ensure that all of us are safe.”

“Through our Corporate Social responsibility program we purchased some vaccines which are housed at Cimas through the Ministry of Health and Child Care,” said Ms Mutemererwa.

Annah Chisara who resides in Mandebvu said he was failing to get vaccinated because of work commitments.

Gogo Nedi Richard gets a jab at Stapleford in Harare.

“I have been failing to get vaccinated all along because l could not queue because of work, I just want to thank Seed Co for the program,” she said.

Zimbabwe yesterday took delivery of one million Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines purchased from China, taking the total number of vaccines brought into the country so far to over five million.

So far, 97,894 Covid-1 cases have been recorded since last year with 3, 094 deaths.

Zimbabwe has the 3rd highest rate of vaccinations in SADC and eighth highest in Africa as a share of the population.

The country launched its vaccination roll-out in February with the first large batch of jabs targeting frontline health workers and other frontline staff.