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Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Const process underway at last

Written by Natasha Hove

Monday, 11 January 2010 17:38

HARARE - The gathering of the people's views on the long-awaited constitution-making process begins this week, co-chairperson Douglas Mwonzora has confirmed.

A three-day training exercise for outreach teams ends on Thursday, after which they will be deployed countrywide to gather people's views, using a 'document which resembles a questionnaire'.

About 700 people, among them parliamentarians, members of the civic society, church representatives, traditional leaders and special interest groups such as war veterans will take part in the training exercise.

"We expect the outreach to start on Thursday, immediately after the training of the teams. We will have 70 teams and each team will have roughly eight people who will collect information in an average of three constituencies.

"The teams will be stationed at the districts until they finish their consultations which are expected to last 65 days. We expect the teams to hold three meetings in each rural ward because of the distances involved," Mwonzora said.

The constitution-making process which is one of the agreements of a power sharing deal signed last year has been moving at a snail's pace, largely due to lack of finances. Disagreements between Zanu (PF) and the MDC over what course to take over the gathering of views on the constitution making process has also been one of the sticking points.

Zanu (PF) favoured a Kariba Draft being used as a reference point, but the MDC was insistent upon a people-driven process. The two parties have however since agreed to use a document which resembles a questionnaire to gather people's views on the process which was allocated US$43million in the 2010 budget