24 Jul 2019
NANGO urges the Government to employ public consultative approaches when developing national and legislations instruments. This comes after prolonged realisation and recognition of exclusion of the public in the various legislative and policy reforms that have been promulgated by the Government.
Section 13 on National Development, subsection 2 of the Consititution provides that ‘Measures referred to in this section must involve the people in the formulation and implementation of development and programmes that affect them’. Thus, the Constitutional provides that the Government must involve the people in formulation of policies and legislations.
Recently, the Government instituted Statutory Instruments (SIs) that have a negative bearing on the welfare of the general public in particular the SI 142/19 and SI 145/19 to mention a few. Evidently, these were developed without an iota of public involvement. These were developed without due diligence and without respect for the right to administrative justice as guaranteed in Chapter 4 Section 68 of the Constitution.
The Government has an obligation of consulting citizens before announcing and effecting any legal and policy instruments. The public have the right to administrative conduct that is lawful, prompt, efficient, reasonable, proportionate, impartial and both substantively and procedurally fair. Ownership and buy-in of new policies by the public is imperative for the success of new policy reforms yet there are several policies that the Government has developed and went on to implement without effective public participation and engagement.
Due to this, NANGO calls on government to follow due process and respect administrative rights ahead of effecting any legal instrument that affects the day to day lives of Zimbabweans.
NANGO is the officially recognised coordinating body of NGOs operating in Zimbabwe. It is the largest umbrella body for non-governmental organisations and was established in 1962. It is a non-partisan, non-profit making and non-denominational coordinating body of NGOs in Zimbabwe. NANGO is mandated by its membership to coordinate the activities of NGOs, represent the NGO sector and strengthen the voice of NGOs in Zimbabwe.
