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Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu, Senior Health Reporter
RESOURCE constraints are limiting Government’s ability to establish more police bases to combat crime amid reports that at least 40 percent of households have access to policing services in Zimbabwe.

This deters members of the public from timeously reporting crimes especially sexual and physical abuse.

According to the recently released Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) report, people in Matabeleland North and South provinces live the furthest from police stations or bases.

The report shows that 33 percent of households in Matebeleland North can reach police within an hour while in Matabeleland South, the rate is 37 percent.

“Nationally, 40 percent of the households had access to police services that were reachable within one hour.

About 29 percent of the households had access to services for physical and sexual violence,” read the ZimVAC report.

“Mashonaland Central and Mashonaland East had the largest proportion of households with access to police services within one hour and to services for physical and sexual violence.”

Child rights and protection expert Mr Alfred Ncube said the presence of police in any community acts as a buffer to curtail or reduce cases of lawlessness.

“This is inclusive of the curtailing abuse incidents for both children and adults.

These systems are also critical in responding swiftly to reported cases.

Absence or long distances to access police stations can lead to late or non-response to abuse cases in the community” said Mr Ncube.

“The presence of police bases can play a major role in swift response to abuse cases and also raising awareness as part of prevention.

It is unfortunate that some communities don’t have such services nearby and this in turn affects the survivors of abuse, their families and the community at large.

Police have done a lot to support the survivors of abuse and their families to bringing the culprits to book but the absence of police stations close to some communities needs to be looked into and areas affected are identified so that such stations are located within a radius of 5km and not more than 10km,” he added.

Contacted for comment, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Deputy Minister Ruth Maboyi said it was Government policy to have stations at least 5km away from the people.

She said resource challenges have resulted in some villagers walking long distances to the nearest police station or base.

“We wish to avail our services to everyone and ideally police should be reachable at any given point.

However due to resource constraints we can easily have that because for any station to be active we need to ensure police have decent accommodation but we are working on that as Government,” said Deputy Minister Maboyi. — @thamamoe