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Nqobile Tshili Chronicle Reporter
SCORES of unemployed Bulawayo youths have been reporting to White City Stadium daily searching for menial jobs at the venue of the Region Five games that are expected to be held in December.
The stadium is being renovated as part of a programme to spruce up some of Bulawayo’s sporting facilities in preparation for the regional games.

Residents were told by construction companies three months ago when renovations started to report at the stadiums, in case employment opportunities arose.

Chronicle yesterday caught up with scores of disgruntled job seekers at White City who have continued to visit the stadium in search of work.

Chipo Chiguru from Njube suburb said she had been going there for the past three months and only six people had been engaged by the construction company during that period.

“We have been here every day for the past three months and we’ve only seen only six people being employed but the numbers inside are always increasing. We don’t know where the other people are coming from,” said Chiguru.

Another job seeker Sindiso Mpande from Pelandaba suburb said construction companies advised them to report outside the premises everyday so that they could be employed.

“They told us to come here every day in the morning but if we don’t see anything happening by 10AM we should go back home as there will be nothing. We have been coming everyday in fear that some people will get jobs and we regret,” said Mpande.

Tarisai Zinyambi from Magwegwe suburb said the number of people searching for jobs was dwindling by the day as they were losing hope of getting a job.

“We have heard that there is a list of names of people who will get jobs but we don’t know who writes the list. We are always here and we haven’t seen anyone of us getting a job,” said Zinyambi.

The MP for the area Bekithemba Nyathi said the recruitment of labourers was of concern as construction companies were not clear on how they were recruiting.

“We clearly are having problems when it comes to the way the companies are recruiting.
“There is no communication between them and the residents so we don’t know how they select their employees,” said Nyathi.

Comment could not be obtained from construction companies on site as their workers said they were not authorised to divulge information to the Press and their bosses were not around.

Two months ago, Bulawayo residents accused construction companies which won tenders of importing even manual labour.
The Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Cde Andrew Langa, subsequently warned the companies against the practice, saying they could only bring their artisans for other jobs but all manual labour should be done by locals.