HARARE - The International Organisation for Migration has confirmed that millions of Zimbabweans who left home and settled in foreign countries were economic refugees.
The assessment we have done so far confirms that many Zimbabweans chose to move in pursuit of better economic opportunities, and with things improving in the country we expect an improvement in the returning of those immigrants, IMO Deputy Chief of Mission to Zimbabwe, Katie Kerr told journalists on the sidelines of her organisations boat donation to the department of Civil Protection in Harare.
It is believed that more than three million Zimbabweans left the country for political and economic reasons in the past decade.
We are trying to establish the exact number of immigrants from who have returned since the formation of the inclusive government and its unfortunate that at the moment we do no have the figures. But we have witnessed qualified professional nationals choosing to return, she said.
Commenting about the current registration of Zimbabweans in South Africa, the IOM representative said it was for the benefit of Zimbabweans living in that country to seek legal documentation in order to stay safe and evade various forms of exploitation by South African nationals if they remained illegal immigrants.
Zimbabweans have endured all kinds of abuse as while living in South Africa, where the majority have the status of economic refugees scrounging everywhere for a living.
Recent xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals have exposed them to physical attacks by South Africans who accuse them of lowering their countrys worker remuneration standards by accepting anything as payments.
Post published in: News