Golden Jubilee For Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference
President and had won in the last election. This is work in progress where the
office does not see a solution in sight. The office has also to introduce the new
members of parliament to the work of parliament from January, 2019. Issues put
forward by the church to be considered by parliament are; alignment of the laws
to the 2013 Constitution, the government to reduce its expenditure and thereby
improve the lives of the people, reduction of taxes for the people, creation of
jobs for the people, the government to ensure that women and children are
protected in the public and private environments and most importantly the bill of
rights in the constitution is protected. These are some but not all the issues which
must be deliberated in parliament as suggested by the Bishops Conference.
c. Change of MPs after the Elections
The elections that take place after every 5 years see the change of MPs. The fact
that there are new people joining parliament means more work for the office. It
also means new relationships and trust should first be established for the
continuation of CPLO work.
d. Knowledge of the Constitution
Some time in 2015 the office was funded for the translation of the constitution
into 4 recognized languages. After the work of translating the constitution into 4
recognized languages was successfully completed, the government realised it
was possible and then engaged a translation team to translate the remaining 11
languages with the assistance of the CPLO. Now the Constitution has been
translated into the 16 languages as required by the law. The church is grateful for
this. To carry this work forward EU has offered to have more constitutions
printed and at the same time have the constitutions discussed as a way of
popularising the document as required by section 7 of the same constitution.
It shall be noted that the translations done by the ZCBC( Zimbabwe Catholic
Bishops’ Conference) attracted a lot of the donor community and the
commitment shown by EU is a manifestation of the support that the
international community is ready to render when good work is done at a local
level.The office has realised that the knowledge of the constitution is an ongoing
thing which should be improved all the time. So far, it has been realised that
whenever a problem has arisen, that is when an individual opens a constitution
to find out on what the constitution will be saying. It is amazing to note that the
empeachment process that took place in parliament in 2017 drew a lot of interest
in the people and most people read the sections that concerned this topic and
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