Masvingo City Council is providing psychosocial support to residents affected by the October 5 hailstorm to help them cope with the loss of their homes and belongings.
The hailstorm caused widespread destruction across the city, affecting thousands of households, while government and other stakeholders mobilised assistance for affected families.
Speaking during a recent Full Council meeting, Women’s Quota councillor Sharon Marombedze said council’s Gender Relations Desk was offering counselling services through local clinics, health facilities and other stakeholders.
She said although council might not have the financial resources to assist all affected families adequately, it could provide psychosocial support as residents waited for promised assistance.
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“We know that we may lack the financial capacity to cater for the affected people, but there are other things that we can be able to do to help our people. Such disasters usually leave people with a lot on their minds,” she said.
“As the Gender Relations Desk, we are offering psychosocial support to all the affected community members. We are appealing for the spread of this information so that it may reach everyone who was affected. Our clinics, other health facilities and stakeholders are there to help us counsel all the affected people.”
Marombedze said counselling would help residents cope with their circumstances as they waited for assistance and worked towards rebuilding their properties.
“At least if we offer counselling, by the time the assistance that has been promised comes, and the people also go out there to resuscitate their properties, they will be in a better state of mind to handle the situation,” she said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Daniel Mberikunashe called for better coordination between government officials registering vulnerable households and councillors to ensure that deserving residents were not excluded from the assistance programme.
He said councillors were better placed to identify vulnerable residents in their wards and should be involved in the registration process.
“When the people who were assigned to list vulnerable people go out to communities registering people, we ask that they liaise with councillors. It would also help to rope in the Town Clerk too,” he said.
“There are a lot of vulnerable people in our communities that are being left out in this process, who really need the help. May they be engaged and that issue be ironed out.”
Responding, Mayor Aleck Tabe said the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare had a database of more than 6,500 vulnerable people, which was being used to identify beneficiaries for government assistance.
He said the ministry had also asked councillors to submit their lists to supplement its records.
“The ministry had advised that they had their own database and they were asking councillors to give them the lists that they had to supplement what they already had. They had over 6 500 people in their database,” he said.
“The government was quite clear that it was going to focus mostly on the vulnerable members of the community, so that was what happened. But we will seek guidance going forward.”
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