Speaking two days after all the youths were bailed from Khami remand prison, leaders of the Mthwakazi Youth Joint Resolution (MYJR) told the press Friday that they were humbled by the massive support from the city’s residents.
The youths said contrary to police allegations, the youths were peacefully making their way to the offices of energy supplier ZESA, to hand in their job applications.
“It is our culture to travel in groups, especially as unemployed people with no money or jobs. Our aim was to hand in CVs of hundreds of Bulawayo citizens desperate for work,” the group’s spokesman Mqondisi Moyo told the gathering.
Speaking to SW Radio Africa after the conference, Moyo said their trip to ZESA’s Bulawayo offices was in response to reports that the national energy firm had already employed people from ‘outside’, while ignoring the region’s thousands of unemployed youths.
“We are failing to even pay our electricity bills to the company and yet ZESA brings in people from Kwekwe to do jobs that even do not require special skills,” Moyo said.
He added: “We are saying ZESA should have given employment priority to residents of Emganwini, Nketa and Nkulumane suburbs who reside near the Insukamini sub-station (where the positions are based) before even considering wider Bulawayo.”
Moyo denied that the youth group’s grievances against ZESA had ethnic undertones, and explained that the youth outfit was composed of members from all ethnic backgrounds who wished to see the concept of devolution (as outlined in the recently adopted constitution) being practised.
Moyo said their members will be intensifying engagements with other companies including the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (ZINARA) which is understood to be in the process of recruiting tollgate tellers for its recently-opened plaza in Ntabazinduna, just outside Bulawayo.
23 members of the combined youth group spent two nights in custody this week despite being bailed by a magistrate on Tuesday, after they failed to raise the $50 bail fee.
They were finally released after well-wishers intervened, and SW Radio Africa is reliably informed that a well-known local politician provided the bulk of the money.
The youths were bailed to appear at Bulawayo Magistrates’ Court on April 23rd, to face criminal nuisance charges, which they all deny. – SW Radio Africa
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