President Emmerson Mnangagwa has touched on the issue vandalism of electricity lines during the commissioning of the Zimbabwe Defence University dedicated power line today.
This comes at a time when the state owned power generating parastatal, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, (ZESA Holdings), has been losing over US$9 million annually due to vandalism and theft of infrastructure.
“It is disturbing to note that whilst concrete investments are being made to broaden our electricity generation and distribution matrix, the scourge of vandalism of national power infrastructure is on the rise,” the President said.
“I call upon the nation and communities across all districts and provinces to raise their security consciousness and safeguard our national infrastructure.”
The Zimbabwean leader also challenged communities to co–operate with the law enforcement agencies, by exposing known perpetrators of vandalism.
“At this stage of our development epoch, communities must never harbour criminal elements,” he said.
“It is also important that our social institutions, right from the family level, scale–up the nurturing of honest individuals who revere the virtues of individual and collective responsibility guided by the values of Ubuntu/Hunhu.”
Robberies and theft, in general have been on the rise in Zimbabwe with police reporting of more than $5 million were robbed last year from January to October.
President Mnangagwa also challenged the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and other stakeholders to scale up operations to flush out criminal elements who vandalise national infrastructure.
“On its part, my Government will continue tightening the legal instruments and other deterrent measures to curb the vandalism of national infrastructure,” he said.
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