Source: The Herald – Breaking news.
Acting Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri (right) with Chief of Mission International Organisation for Migration Zimbabwe Ms Diana Cartier during a courtesy call in Harare yesterday. — Picture: Charles Muchakagara.Remember Deketeke-Herald Correspondent
International Organisation for Migration (IOM) director Ms Diana Cartier yesterday paid a courtesy call on Acting Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri at her offices in Harare and discussed a range of issues concerning migration.
The two discussed areas of cooperation, including climate change and dealing with attacks on foreigners in South Africa.
Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri chronicled how the IOM facilitated the sending of teachers to Rwanda.
“They also facilitated the MoU, which took place between the Government of Zimbabwe and the Government of Rwanda, which saw a lot of our teachers and other professionals being employed in Rwanda,” she said.
“This is very key, because it’s more systematically organised, and remittances are also systematically mobilised.”
Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri hailed the excellent collaboration between Government and the IOM, saying the body had promised to help in the relocation of Zimbabweans in South Africa whose residence permits would have expired.
“We have had policies made at the highest levels, where people are saying they should go back to their countries, and they have singled out Zimbabwe. So, we are going to be seeing more Zimbabweans coming back home because of that,” she said.
Ms Cartier said she was looking forward to strengthening the cooperation between the Government and the IOM.
“Migration exists and the best way to make it work and be positive is to find ways for it to be able to flow in a way where it’s regular, where people are safe when they migrate, where they can make choices, they can go and they can come back,” she said.
“This is always a challenge. It is a challenge around the world but it is one that we are committed to looking at here in Zimbabwe, working with Zimbabweans that are returning, working with Zimbabweans that are able to work in other parts of the world and come back.”
Ms Cartier said migration can be harnessed as a tool for economic development, where the Diaspora can contribute to national development through financial remittances and skills transfer.
There can also be problems related to migration, she said.
Some Zimbabweans and other foreigners have been victims of xenophobic attacks in South Africa with the latest being a story of a South African farmer who allegedly killed two women and shot and injured the husband of one of the women after they were caught by the farm owner in Limpopo picking up expired food.
The farmer, Zachariah Olivier (60) and workers — Adriaan De Wet (19) and William Musoro (45) — are facing murder charges after the decomposing bodies of the victims were discovered in a pigsty on a farm in Limpopo on August 20.
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