Minister of Home Affairs Cain Mathema has said police roadblocks will continue in the country’s major highways as they help prevent criminal activities and bring a semblance of sanity on the roads.
Minister Mathema also promised to keep the roadblocks reasonable in number saying the problem was not the roadblocks but the behavior of some police officers manning them, who were demanding and accepting bribes, detaining motorists and unnecessarily inconveniencing the motoring public. He pledged to look into that with a view to weed out all bad apples who were denting the good image of the police and making the country unattractive to investors.
Said Mathema:
ZRP in essence operates according to the Constitution of Zimbabwe; it is an institution that was created by the Constitution, not by me, not by anybody, not even by the President. Therefore, if there are roadblocks, the police will be fulfilling their constitutional mandate and in most cases, it will be part of an operation maybe targeted at criminals, smugglers or even human traffickers.
Further, Zimbabwe is part of Interpol among other organisations inclusive of Comesa, Sadc and AU so if ZRP receives information from our partners on certain criminal activities, we will then have to set up roadblocks to help stop the criminality that might be happening and maybe in transit. To be frank, no country exists without roadblocks
More: Bulawayo 24