United Nations Resident Coordinator in Zimbabwe Bishow Parajuli has refuted claims that government’s takeover of BVR Kits procurement was wrong commending government for coming forward with resources and not over relying on donor support.
Addressing a joint media briefing with the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda on the achievements made in the first year of implementation of the 2016-2020 Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework (ZUNDAF), Parajuli said his organisation respect the move by government of Zimbabwe to commit its own resources for the procurement of bio-metric voter registration kits.
“On the issue of BVR, you know we work on request from Government and all the UN programmes are joint programmes between Government and the UN.
“Actually we commend the Government for coming forward with resources. I think this is wonderful and that is key for sustainability and so in fact we very much welcome that,” said Parajuli.
He added that as UNDP they appreciated government’s commitment to funding some its own programmes outside donor support.
“There should be no question on who is doing what now or later because we always agree with Government,” he said.
Dr Misheck Sibanda denied rumors and reports that government was distributing food on partisan basis saying it is the idea of opposition to tarnish the image of government.
Responding to the same question, UN resident coordinator Bishow Parajuli denied the issue of politics but he said that UN wants only to help in food reliefs not aligned to political parties of the country.
“We just working with the government in helping the floods affected people, we have no idea of these politics rumors,” said Parajuli.
Parajuli went on to say that the 2016-2020 ZUNDAF and the United Nations, supports national development efforts in six result areas.
The meeting was jointly convened by the Government and the United Nations and brought together some 150 senior officials from Government, UN, Development Partners and Civil Society Organizations to validate program results achieved under the 2016-2020 Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework (ZUNDAF).
