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tracts of their land without consulting them.

Presenting their concerns to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who toured the ethanol plant on Sunday, some headmen said they were also not happy with a committee established to select beneficiaries of irrigated plots, which were being developed by Green Fuel.

They accused Green Fuel of trespassing its legal development boundaries thereby posing a serious threat to their livelihoods. It was also pointed out that initially the ethanol project was expected to cover only 6 000 hectares of Arda land in Chisumbanje but now it had taken more than 40 000 hectares belonging to the local people.

The first phase of the US$600 million ethanol project is being implemented by Arda and Green Fuel is expected to produce over 40 million litres of fuel by December this year. One of the local headmen, Mr Munyondozi, said Green Fuel had embarked on a massive expansion drive, which was likely going to see more than eight schools and four clinics being demolished.

“Many families in this area depend on land tillage but the land is being taken by Green Fuel without any consultation.
“From information th-at we are receiving, eig-ht schools and four cli-nics are set to be demolished to pave way for Green Fuel expansion.

“On grave sites, caterpillars are already wai-ting to destroy graves of our relatives,” he said. He also claimed that the committee that was ad-ministering the allocation of plots developed by Green Fuel was illegally constituted and sh-ould be dissolved.

Headman Munyondo-zi also appealed to Government that any further expansion by Green Fuel should be stopped until a common ground was reached on how it should be implemented.
Local House of Assembly Member, Mr Makuyana Meki and the Rural District Council chairman Mr Rephias Sithole said they were not part of that committee. Green Fuel general manager, Mr Graeham Smith, said the land they were developing was already earmarked for commercial development way back in the 1960s.

He said his company was actually doing everything for the betterment of the local people since 75 percent of their workforce was coming from communities in the lowveld.
“We have a workforce of about 4 500 people in Chisumbanje and Middle Sabi and 75 percent of that number is coming from the local people. We are also developing 1 500 hectares of land for irrigation for local people. We have set a committee that will administer the distribution of the plots,” he said.

Green Fuel assistant general manager, Mr Raphel Zuze, insisted that the committee was constituted in consultation with the local leadership. He said reports that it was excluding other key stakeholders were not true.

Mr Zuze further said the local chief, chief Garawa and the Chisumbanje Rural District Council were also part of that committee.
“When we started this project, we had a meeting that showed the plan of the greater Chisumbanje and everyone knew about this meeting. The council was involved and council means councillors and the chief executive of the council is actually a member of this committee. We tried by all means to leave out politics out of this project,” he said.

Responding to allegations raised by the people, PM Tsvangirai said the project should not be stopped but a taskforce should be set to deal with the plight of the local people.
He said wherever a big project was initiated, displacements always took place but mechanisms should be put in place to address concerns of local people.

“I am going to raise the issue in Cabinet and a taskforce should be set up to deal with this matter. A Cabinet taskforce comprising ministries of Land, Agriculture, Local Government and Social Welfare should come here to deal with your concerns,” he said.

The project is likely to produce slightly cheaper fuel and 45 Megawatts of electricity to the national grid.