Zimpapers Logo

Mr Bishow Parajuli

Herald Reporter—
The United Nations has said it will continue to work with the Government to spearhead several development programmes in the country. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) country representative, Mr Bishow Parajuli, told The Herald after meeting Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his Munhumutapa Offices yesterday, that they were involved in several areas such as education and agriculture.

“We work as the United Nations system across many areas, not particularly in the agricultural sector,” he said.

“There are ongoing programmes and also there is work World Food Programme is doing in terms of how to promote sustainable agriculture.

“There is lot of work in promoting education, making sure all the children continue going to school with UNICEF and also area of water sanitation and HIV and Aids, with UNDP in partnership with the Global Fund and a lot of work in terms of promoting human rights and democratic governance with the Ministry of Justice, Human Rights Commission, as well as the Zimbabwe Election Commission. We are supporting a number of areas.”

Mr Parajuli said VP Mnangagwa applauded the work that the UN was doing in promoting development in Zimbabwe.

“We kept the Vice President abreast of the excellent cooperation between the UN system and the Government of Zimbabwe across areas, the work we did during the period of the drought and floods and also the ongoing development work, the cooperation we have in areas such as HIV, agriculture, gender and promotion of human rights,” he said.

“I also applauded his leadership in terms of implementation of UPR recommendation and we talked about how we can promote and work together to address some of those accepted recommendations and taking them forward.

“The VP highly appreciated the UN work and continued to ask for good cooperation between the UN and the Government of Zimbabwe.”

Turning to the coming farming season, Mr Parajuli said: “There is the latest forecast by the Meteorological Services Department on the weather side and the signs are good, but we have to work on a technical level in terms of preparation of and provision of various things — agricultural inputs, but we did not discuss those details.”