Foreign Affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi has been summoned to appear before the National Assembly to explain what government did to rescue the over 200 women stranded in Kuwait after they fell victim to human trafficking.
Source: Parly summons Mumbengegwi over human trafficking – NewsDay Zimbabwe June 8, 2016
BY XOLISANI NCUBE
Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda made the ruling after Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga (MDC Proportional Representation) threatened female MPs would resume sitting on the floor in protest until Mumbengegwi addressed them over the issue.
“We will write to the minister, but we can’t give a time frame as when he should come. We will transmit the message to the minister and implore that he comes,” Mudenda said.
Goromonzi East legislator Beatrice Nyamupinga (Zanu PF) suggested that female MPs should also take their protest to the Kuwaiti embassy if Mumbengegwi does not respond to their demands.
Last month, female MPs sat on the floor in the House demanding that the over 200 women trafficked to Kuwait be brought back home.
The move by the MPs was triggered the Kindness Paradza-led Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs which narrated sordid tales of how the girls were lured to Kuwait after being offered lucrative packages to work as housemaids, but ended up being enslaved, starved of food and sexually abused.
MPs were angered that Mumbengegwi allegedly acted in total disdain, ignoring distress calls by Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Kuwait, Grey Marongwe, to send money to repatriate the stranded women. The MPs have also demanded that Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa today clarify the introduction of bond notes as most people were still confused about how they will operate.
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