ZCTU slams proposed Municipal Bill for criminalising poverty

THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has slammed Cabinet’s decision to green light the Municipal Police and Courts Bill for criminalising vendors’ poverty rather than managing it. In a statement Friday, ZCTU secretary general, Tirivanhu Marimo expressed deep concern and outright rejection of the proposed Bill describing it as an unnecessary gesture which comes at a time when most of the local authorities in the country are already struggling to contain internal corruption malpractices. He said while framed as a measure to enhance local governance, devolution and city management, this legislation represents a dangerous shift toward the militarisation and criminalisation of urban livelihoods “Granting municipal officers’ powers of arrest, investigation and prosecution will not solve urban management challenges.

Instead, it will exacerbate human rights abuses, disproportionately harm informal workers, and deepen economic exclusion across Zimbabwe,” Marimo said. The country’s most influential labour federation said the proposed Bill entrenches the criminalisation of informal economy activities and sidelines over 85% of Zimbabweans earn their living within the informal economy with 62% of the urban workforce operating in the sector. ZCTU said recent estimates already suggest that extreme poverty impacts roughly 49% to 60% of the population due to subsequent economic inflation and climatic shocks.

“Vendors, micro traders, and informal transport operators are no criminals, they are citizens determined to survive under severe macro-economic pressures. Empowering local authorities to arrest and prosecute vendors in municipal courts treats structural poverty as a law enforcement problem rather than an economic challenge,” said Marimo. The labour leader said the plans contradict similar such experiments conducted in the past whose history shows that municipal enforcement often relies on violent raids, illegal confiscation of goods and arbitrary detentions.

Expanding their mandate, he underscored, threatens to turn city streets into conflict zones, corruption and extortion hubs. “The ZCTU demands and call on Parliament and the executive to immediately stop progression of the Municipal Police and Courts Bill in its current form and embrace a human-centered approach. The focus should not be towards punitive policing; instead, it should lean towards investing in a…