Constitution T-shirts missing

Each team is comprised of 11 members meaning that only six will get the T-Shirts that bear the constitutional parliamentary committees (COPAC) logo while five per each team will be forced to put on their own clothes. The development has sparked outrage from the outreach teams who say the exercise has been thrown into confusion.

A member of the outreach team who spoke on condition of anonymity said in other provinces, the outreach team members were given six T-Shirts each to wear for the whole week. We were shocked when some of the team members failed to get T Shirts and hats to wear during the outreach exercise. When we asked the officials responsible for the distribution, they told us that they were stolen, said a member.

Now the whole process has been thrown into confusion, imagine a situation where some team members are wearing the COPAC T-Shirts while others are wearing their own clothes. Are people expected to take us seriously when we do not convince them that we are an orderly lot?

Some only brought with them two pairs of shirts because we were made to believe that we would be wearing the COPPAC shirts during the exercise. There is no uniformity at all because some look like they are coming from herding cattle, said the member.

Copac co-chairperson Douglas Mwonzora said he was not aware of the issue but would institute an investigation.

We have not received that report from the Midlands team and I am wondering how 600 shirts would disappear just like that, said Mwonzora. The outreach exercise had been postponed on many occasions before it started last week. However, when it started, it did on a chaotic note, with teams being kicked out of hotels, controversy over thehiring of outreach vehicles and lack of equipment. Copac has also deferred public consultations in Harare and Bulawayo, saying the people in both cities were pre-occupied with the Fifa World Cup under way in South Africa.