Jenfan Muswere
ACTING Information minister, Jenfan Muswere, yesterday likened Zimbabwe’s raging and deadlier second wave coronavirus storm as a war amid the country’s soaring deaths and infections.
Speaking to the Daily News On Sunday, the concerned Muswere also described the global pandemic as “one of the worst diseases in the history of the country”.
“During the burial of Dr Ellen Gwaradzimba and Cde Morton Malianga, President Emmerson Mnangagwa indeed highlighted that this is a deadly war facing us as a nation, requiring us to unite against the pandemic.
“To us, this disease is, for sure, like a war, after the First and Second Chimurenga, the 1970s liberation war.
Harare, Zimbabwe – Since New Year’s Day, Thomas Rasauka , a gravedigger in Zimbabwe’s capital, has had very little rest.
“We are digging 10 to 12 graves daily now,” he said, describing the past few weeks as one of the most tiresome and busiest periods in all his 12 years in the profession.
It is mid-morning on Monday and Rasauka and seven of his colleagues at Warren Hills Cemetery, one of the oldest graveyards west of Harare, dig the semi-dry ground, forcefully tossing the loose red sand and heaping it on the side.
It is the fifth grave the team has dug since they started work.
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s capital markets are likely to see a spike in US dollar-denominated assets after Government last year allowed insurance companies and pension funds to collect premiums and contributions in foreign currency.
And because these entities typically need to grow these funds and pay them back in the currency of collection, demand for foreign currency denominated investment assets in the country will rise.
Statutory Instrument 280 of 2020, which was promulgated last November, amended the Exchange Control (Exclusive Use of Zimbabwe Dollar for Domestic Transactions) Regulations to allow insurance companies and pension funds to transact in foreign currency.
Association of Investment Managers of Zimbabwe chairman Mr Jubelah Magutakuona, said the move will boost the local capital markets.
HARARE (Bloomberg) Zimbabwean banks have closed about 17% of their branches as an escalation in the number of coronavirus infections spurs lenders to shut their doors for the time being and accelerate a digitization drive.
Of the 300 branches in the country, 10% were permanently closed last year due to the digitization push. An additional 23 branches are now temporarily under lock and key in response to a strict 30-day lockdown that started on Jan. 5, the Zimbabwe Bankers’ Allied Workers Union said.
“There is a high possibility that some may never be re-opened in the foreseeable future,” Shepherd Ngandu, the assistant secretary-general of the union, said by text message.
MONEYWEB
app instead? As virus drives digitisation. 14:24
Image: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg
Zimbabwean banks have closed about 17% of their branches as an escalation in the number of coronavirus infections spurs lenders to shut their doors for the time being and accelerate a digitisation drive.
Of the 300 branches in the country, 10% were permanently closed last year due to the digitisation push. An additional 23 branches are now temporarily under lock and key in response to a strict 30-day lockdown that started on January 5, the Zimbabwe Bankersâ Allied Workers Union said.
âThere is a high possibility that some may never be re-opened in the foreseeable future,â Shepherd Ngandu, the assistant secretary-general of the union, said by text message.