>residents will be queuing for commodities such as sugar, mealie-meal,
cooking oil and bread, on the pretext they were controlling the crowd.
At one supermarket in the city where sugar was being delivered, a CAJ
reporter witnessed police officers buying goods in bulk.
Civilians were being restricted to just 4 kg of sugar each.
At another supermarket where mealie-meal was being offloaded, police
officers did the same, negotiated to buy in large quantities.
In a bid to curb Makorokozas (those who buy commodities in bulk, then sell
them on the black market), supermarkets are now demanding buyers produce
national identification cards. Supermarkets then apparently computerise
their names and identification numbers. Those who intend to buy sugar in
bulk at another supermarket will not be able to do so, as their names will
be detected on the computer.
“The measures that residents should produce identification cards and then
feed the information in the computer is a good action to wade off the black
market but police officers who abuse power to buy in bulk should be
arrested,” said one consumer. – CAJ News
2.8.2007
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Police ‘Makorokozas’
MASVINGO - The government's threats to arrest members of the public for
hoarding scarce basic commodities have been undermined by police officers in
Masvingo, who were leading in the hoarding of basic commodities.
Investigations by CAJ News revealed that the officers go where city