War veterans call for bank and hospital

Zimbabwe’s war veterans now want government to establish a bank for them and build a specialised hospital to exclusively treat the 25 000 former liberation war fighters. This was confirmed by Defence and War Veterans Ministry secretary Mark Marongwe following a recommendation by the parliamentary portfolio committee that the veterans should be excluded from paying toll and parking fees. ‘Women have their own bank which was established for them, but if you look at the war heroes, they are not well funded in terms of self-help projects,’ Marongwe said, adding that there was need for financing to be made available through a war veterans’ bank. The Zimbabwe Standard reports that he said like other countries, including the US, there was need for a specialised hospital to cater for our war veterans ‘and the hospital can raise money through charging fees to non-veteran clients’. In 1997, former President Robert Mugabe was forced to pay the former fighters huge unbudgeted pay-outs after they began protesting.