BY BRENDA NCUBE
Villagers living in the outskirts of Victoria Falls have been left counting losses after eight suspected thieves broke into their community nutrition gardens and stole solar panels on Saturday last week.
According to the area councillors, the thieves separately stole at least nine solar panels in Mashala, Change and Mpongola wards and vandalised some.
According to Marvelous Mhlanga, one of the farmers from Mashala, the suspects firstly attempted to steal a pump and an inverter but failed, before opting to vandalise the solar panels.
Pascar Mpofu, a councillor for Mashala ward said because of the disruptions, villagers are no longer able to water their gardens, posing a risk to many whose source of livelihoods is in farming.
“All gardening activities have stopped as the only source of water for domestic use and gardening has been cut,” he said.
The solar pumps were installed several years ago by World Vision in a bid to make Hwange villages self-sufficient and have since become the source of livelihood for the community.
For villagers such as Mhlanga, the garden produce could suffice their families and could manage to send their children to school through wholesaling green paper, green beans, carrots and sugar beans as far as Hwange urban.
“Now we are at a loss and not sure how to survive as we are already fetching water for domestic use from the streams,”Mhlanga said.
” We are hoping that the rains will be enough for our crops to ripen, but we don’t know what the future holds. ” she added.
Mpofu said that the solar panels will need to be replaced in time to resume gardening activities and the community is in the process of mobilising a neighborhood watch to safeguard the premises.
“We believe that the thieves are locals working with outsiders,” said Mpofu
He further revealed that the suspects have been caught and are in police custody for questioning.
Meanwhile, several solar panels have also been stolen from boreholes dotted around Hwange National Park, Kazuma Pan National Park and the Zambezi National Park by suspected thieves from neighbouring Zambia.
Trevor Lane, whose Bhejane Trust has been leading in the mobilisation of funds to drill boreholes and install solar panels to power the pumps at the three game parks, said the theft of solar panels intensified during Covid-19 lockdowns.