Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. The government has admitted that completely getting rid of crime and corruption may be a tall order amid reports that Zimbabwe has lost a staggering US$9 billion, with only US$100 million recovered over the last five years.
The revelation came during a session in Parliament, where Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe responded to concerns over rising crime levels.
Kazembe said that while steps are being taken to tackle the issue, the total elimination of crime and graft is likely “unattainable”. He said:Firstly, it is the responsibility of the police and it is the responsibility of the Government to make sure there is peace. We have to nip crime in the bud. We have to prevent crimes from happening.
However, let me start by saying that the Government might not be able to stop crime totally because we cannot stop someone’s thoughts.
We have 15 or 16 million people in this country. As we are seated here, we do not know what people are thinking.
Maybe someone is committing a crime as we are talking. Someone might be raping, beating up someone and committing different crimes.
It is not possible for the Government to totally eradicate crime, corruption and stealing.
What we must do as a Government is what I am going to explain, that we can take measures to lessen crime as we work towards the prevention of criminal activities. We are carrying out awareness campaigns every day.
We have different programmes that we are running where we are educating people, not to keep large sums of money at home and to boast about having money because by so doing, you will be attracting thieves. This is one of the measures that we are taking.
We are also trying our best to educate people to work together when we have noticed illegal activities to inform the police. Let us not take the police as enemies.
We need the sharing of information with police because policemen are citizens. They cannot be everywhere. We also want to inform the House that we are going to be increasing patrols.
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