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Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, Gwanda Correspondent
GWANDA has introduced a new system of buying subsidised mealie-meal that will see people accessing it from their wards in order to stop residents from flocking to the Central Business District (CBD).

In an interview Gwanda mayor, councilor Jastone Mazhale said they met as the Gwanda taskforce on Covid-19 and came up with the new system to limit the number of people coming into the CBD in search of the subsidised mealie-meal.

He said under the new system councillors collect the mealie-meal from supermarkets and then distribute it to people in their wards.

“We met as a taskforce in a bid to come up with measures to decongest the CBD as people were now flocking into town in order to buy mealie-meal and they were not observing the order of social distancing. We came up with a new buying system where councillors working with their ward committees collect payments for mealie-meal from the people and then go and make purchases from supermarkets,” he said.

“The councillors then collect the mealie meal and take it back to the wards for people to collect. We are trying to make sure that we have few people flocking into town in search of mealie-meal.

“We started this yesterday (Monday) and it yielded positive results. All 10 wards managed to get an allocation of mealie-meal. We are still working on how best to implement this strategy as we have people paying in cash while others are using cards and EcoCash. We will be holding a meeting on Friday to work on these modalities.”.

The mayor said so far well-wishers were transporting the mealie-meal but they would meet on Friday to decide how residents will pay transport costs.

Cllr Mazhale said they were also trying to engage millers to ensure that mealie-meal is also delivered to small grocery shops in various wards so that people buy straight from their wards. He said they were working together with supermarkets to ensure that there is communication whenever they receive mealie-meal.

“Each councillor has a register and when a resident from their ward buys mealie-meal their name will be ticked and the councillor will put a stamp and signature so that they don’t buy again the next time but the remaining people on the list will buy. We are also trying to avoid a situation where we have the same people repeatedly buying mealie-meal while others don’t have.

“Once everyone on the list has bought their mealie-meal then we can start at the top of the list again. This way we will have an orderly manner of buying mealie-meal,” he said.

A manager at a local supermarket who preferred anonymity said they had started implementing the new system of selling mealie meal. He said however people who were within the vicinity were allowed to purchase mealie meal on their own.

He said this new system had helped ease pressure experienced when people flocked to supermarkets to buy mealie-meal. — @DubeMatutu.