ZACRO is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1923 as a prisoner’s aid society which advocates for justice as well as respect and protection of prisoner’s rights in Zimbabwe.
In an interview with The Zimbabwean, ZACRO Chief Executive Officer Edson Chiota bemoaned that most prisoners after serving their jail terms have nowhere to start from as their assets would have been plundered mostly by their spouses or relatives.
He said ZACRO had assisted in some cases where former prison inmates had their houses and other assets sold without their consent. Chiota said ZACRO was offering legal assistance to the deprived persons to reclaim their properties back as well.
“Besides our major activities, we have decided to introduce a programme under which we look after property that would have been left by imprisoned persons.
“Since we launched the programme in November last year, we have been able to assist a lot of people some who had their houses sold while they were in detention. In some instances, we are even managing finances coming from rentals from houses owned by prison inmates,” said Chiota.
He said it was unfortunate that some former inmates, after serving their jail terms, would resort to criminal tendencies again as they would not be having anything to sustain them.
Chiota said financial constraints were limiting his organisation’s ability to ensure the programme is spread across the country so that it assists as many people as possible.
“At the moment, we have been forced to limit ourselves to Chikurubi Maximum prison because we do not have adequate funding to cover the whole country.
Post published in: News