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Richard Muponde Gwanda Correspondent
GWANDA Town has run out of office space to accommodate government ministries and departments which are relocating from Bulawayo to set base in the mining town.

Government ministries and departments serving Matabeleland South have been operating from Bulawayo since independence.

Residents and politicians have been calling for them to decentralise and set up offices in Gwanda.

Most ministries have relocated to Gwanda but are finding it difficult to find offices.

The Ministry of Local Government and National Housing is mulling reducing the sizes of offices in government buildings to accommodate them.

The issue of the shortage of office space was revealed during a Provincial Development Committee (PDC) meeting at the Ministry of Local Government and National Housing offices yesterday.

The provincial director in the ministry, Sijabuliso Ncube, who was chairing the meeting in place of the Provincial Administrator Midard Khumalo, appealed to other government departments to cede extra offices to accommodate others.

“Let’s help them find office space in our offices. The Ministry of Health and Child Care needs 30 offices. We should try to squeeze them in. If we’ve extra offices please accommodate others. You know we’ve not been building offices in Gwanda for the past year so office space is scarce,” said Ncube.

He said his ministry was mulling reducing the sizes of offices in government buildings so that they create space to accommodate the relocating ministries and departments.

“Our offices are too big so we want to reduce them. So let’s start learning to create space before the exercise starts. Prisons have already relocated and they have no offices. Currently they’re working from Gwanda prison. They should leave that place, they’re not inmates. So far we’ve found two offices for them but they still need more offices. The Ministry of Health and Child Care is using Registry offices,” he said.