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 Leonard Ncube,  [email protected]

ZANU-PF candidate for ward 8 in Victoria Falls Cde Arthur Sibanda has said he intends to promote empowerment of the community, particularly youths and women through income generating projects,  job opportunities and improved service delivery.

A tour guide by profession, Cde Sibanda said he threw his name into the hat after watching the city’s quality of governance deteriorate over the years.

Ward 8 faces challenges of lack of sewer services for the past 20 years, poor water reticulation, lack of proper road network and storm drains while some houses in the CBZ stands have no electricity.

Cde Sibanda has vowed to address these.

He said poor service delivery has affected residents livelihoods hence there is need for leaders who could address these.

“I saw that the town was going down since opposition got into local government as residents keep encountering problems. Service delivery has drastically gone down and I decided to be part of city fathers to attend to these,” said Cde Sibanda.

He said his campaign activities have been going on well.

Cde Sibanda said he started by capacitating groups of women that had formed savings clubs through his help.

“I vowed to be different from previous councillors. I introduced a programme of empowering women rhrough a savings club idea and there are seven groups now in my ward. They meet and create a pool fund which they use to empower each other and it has been working.

“I have also been campaigning by explaining my vision for the people and in the process identify those facing different challenges. I promise to make sure the issue of sewer and water reticulation is addressed because this is a human right,” said Cde Sibanda.

He said each time he explains Zanu-PF manifesto and ideology to people in his ward and this has helped encourage people to want to vote.

The party is targeting 6 million votes for its Presidential candidate President Mnangagwa.

Cde Sibanda said the Harmonised Elections coming on 23 August are a right time to vote out opposition and restore sanity and direction in the local authority.

He said people had realised their mistakes dating back to 20 years ago.

“We want people to benefit from local resources. We want to help tourism grow and locals go to school and the Second Republic has provided the right environment through opening of colleges like the Hwange Teachers College in Hwange and my idea is to engage the powers that be to create space for our local youth to acquire tourism related skills locally,” he said.

Cde Sibanda said another challenge he intends to address is presence of night clubs and bars within residential areas which causes noise for residents