National budget not addressing women’s needs – Rights activists

Although the 2022 national budget projects an increase of ZWL 505.7 billion from the 2021 budget which was pegged at ZWL 421.6, human rights activists say it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of addressing women’s challenges and gender inequalities in Zimbabwe.

Last week Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube  said part of the money will be channelled to infrastructure and state-owned companies, including to recapitalize the national airline.

In an interview, Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) Executive Director Janet Zhou said although the budget targets  growth in 2022, it lacked mechanisms on addressing inequality.

She said the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development allocation of  ZWL 4.7 billion, a mere 0.5% of the total budget, is not enough to address the deep social and economic challenges faced by women in Zimbabwe.

“It is regrettable that women affairs are still lumped together with community, small and medium enterprises which poses risks of expenditure tracking to ascertain the amount of funds that have been used towards addressing the specific challenges faced by women. This is despite the 2022 National Budget recognizing the role of women in economic development as producers, leaders, entrepreneurs and service providers and that there is a positive relationship between “women’s access to financial products and services and increased economic growth and development of the country,” said Zhou.

“Although the 2022 budget has tried to address some of the key challenges faced by women especially productive health issues through for instance by making provisions for free antenatal health care services for disadvantaged expecting mothers as well as sanitary wear in support for the girl child targeting primary school children, women are still affected by some of the budget pronouncements,” she said.

According to Zhou, women will be negatively impacted by some of the budget provisions which include the US$50 Cellphone tax as it is  known that Zimbabwean women are still trying to keep pace with technological advancement and pace, the tax will therefore compromise women’s digital rights.

“Furthermore, the tax further widens educational inequalities as it means the poor rural and urban learners will find it difficult to access online lessons and again the burden of home-schooling will remain on the shoulders of the mothers.

To this, local activist Lindile Ndebele said the allocation did not factor in challenges faced by women that need to be addressed. She said there was a need for funding to empower women who often find themselves as victims of gender based violence.

“We understand that as a country we need to work on infrastructure but we also need to consider investing in income generating projects for women as a long term solutions to gender based violence which affects more than a third of women and girls. We wish the budget would have had an allocation for women empowerment because we know that this will in turn solve a multitude of social ills that we have in our community,” added Ms Ndebele.