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Manicaland Correspondent
GOVERNMENT has authorised Mutare City Council to use some of the devolution funds to repair infrastructure damaged by heavy rains this week.

Several schools, a hotel and other institutions suffered massive damages following heavy rains accompanied by strong winds in the eastern border city.

Chirovakamwe Primary school in Dangamvura surbub had eleven of its classroom roofs partially blown away, while the roof of one classroom block at Hobhouse Primary was completely blown away.

Several buildings at Elise Gledhill High School in Mutare were also left without roofs following the storm Thursday, which also damaged the school’s perimeter wall.

Mutare Teacher’s College had several buildings losing part of their roofs, while delegates attending a workshop at the nearby Golden Peacock Villa Hotel had to scurry for cover after one of the conference rooms had its roof blown off, with the ceiling collapsing in the wake of heavy rains.

It was not clear whether any of the delegates attending the 2019 National Gender Forum was injured or not, as the hotel management declined to comment on the incident.

Speaking during a tour of the affected schools last week, Local Government and Public Works Minister July Moyo said the local authority could use some of the funds to ensure that learners were not inconvenienced by the damages.

“The devolution funds given to provinces should be put to good use for the benefit of future generations and that is why education is one of the priorities of these funds,” he said. “The local authority should, therefore, use the funds to finish off repairing these roofs.”

Mutare City Council town clerk, Mr Joshua Maligwa, said the move to utilise devolution funds would help in urgently restoring quality education in the affected schools.

He said repairs will start as soon as possible to ensure that the pupils were not further affected by the rains.