The floods which caused villagers to be evacuated from Tsholotsho unearthed another major problem. It revealed that the majority of the villagers have no identity records of any kind. Tsholotsho North MP, Professor Jonathan Moyo revealed that most of the people were undocumented due to historical reasons although he did not explicitly mention issues such as the Gukurahundi massacre. Moyo said that the floods had given the government a chance to correct a problem that had been affecting that part of the country.
Said Moyo:
It’s shocking to hear that out of 619 cases that they have documented, only 129 have birth certificates. Some of them lost their documents in the floods while others have never had birth records at all.
Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has been saying for quite some time that a critical problem that is unique to this part of country is that we have people who are undocumented for historical reasons. Most of them don’t have identity documents and birth certificates while some acquired identity particulars through all sorts of means that forced them to alter their background,
…We have been given an opportunity to address one of the serious problems we have in Tsholotsho.
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