Lobengula-Magwegwe legislator, Tendai Nyathi, has claimed that the lack of political will to arrest drug lords is a major deterrent against eradicating drug and substance abuse in various communities.
Nyathi was speaking during Tuesday’s interview on The Breakfast Club on Asakhe Online.
The government and various stakeholders have expressed concern over the prevalence of drug and substance abuse among young people.
Nyathi noted that despite the efforts made by members of the public to report drug peddlers, the alleged suspects always are released and returned to their homes.
“One of the major challenges we face is drug abuse, especially among young people. The lack of willingness from politicians and those in positions of power to apprehend and put away the drug lords is really concerning. Members of communities know who peddles drugs, they will come forth with the information,” Nyathi said.
“As a community leader, when approached with such information you make a formal report. The person can be arrested for a short while but you would see them back at their home and you would be told that there was no evidence.”
On Wednesday, the police released the names of 27 people who were convicted for dealing with drugs stating that “they will continue naming and shaming drug barons and suppliers in any part of the country”.
Nyathi further noted that another challenge affecting not only his constituency but the country at large is that of unemployment.
“There is also the issue of lack of jobs. Most young people are not working. But these are issues, like I always tell people, that do not require us to wait for the government to fix, they need you and me to be pro-active,” he said.
“There are a lot of factors that feed into the growth of unemployment rate. There are issues of policies, that the government is not willing to fix. It may take five years or more for the government to fix which means investors will also take that much time to come and invest their money in our country.
“We need to fix our roads. the issue of energy. We have constant power outages. I’m glad that there are talks of improving the current power system that we have.”
