UNDP to consider humanitarian response

The UNDP office in Harare has said that it would consider “facilitating formulation” of a relief programme for farm workers affected by Zimbabwe’s fast-track land programme.

In a statement received on Thursday on the humanitarian response to the plight of farm workers made destitute as a result of land reform, the UNDP said it had reached a two-point agreement with the ministry of foreign affairs on a possible humanitarian response for farm workers who lost their jobs and homes under the fast-track land programme. “UNDP would consider facilitating formulation of a programme for relief and immediate social needs of vulnerable groups in rural and urban areas for possible support by donors,” the agency said, adding that the “UNDP would strengthen its substantive and operational office capacity in the area of relief assistance” in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, pro-government militants have forced the closure of 900 white-owned commercial farms across Zimbabwe in the past month alone, the ‘Financial Gazette’ reported on Thursday. Colin Cloete, president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), said a total of 25 percent of the farms in the commercial sector had stopped operating because of intimidation from ZANU-PF supporters.

He was quoted as saying that in the tobacco-producing Mashonaland East areas of Hwedza, Macheke and Virginia, 5,000 families, mainly those of black farm workers, had been forced off farms in the past three weeks.

Cloete said that neither commercial farm owners nor resettled peasants were farming because of prevailing uncertainty. “No one is farming, not the commercial farmers or the settlers. This is going to have a severe impact on food production,” he told the newspaper.