VP Mhpoko must vacate Harare hotel: say residents

Under fire to vacate luxury hotel

HARARE residents have demanded that Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko immediately check out of his luxury suite at a top city hotel, saying the cash-strapped government could neither justify nor afford the splurge.

Mphoko and his family have been holed up at the Rainbow Towers Hotel since his appointment as President Robert Mugabe’s deputy in December last year.

Government is footing the bill. Reports claim that Mphoko’s wife rejected three houses offered to the family because “they are too small for a person of the VP’s statue.”

But Harare residents told a meeting called last week to solicit public views on the 2016 national budget that the vice president must leave the hotel.

They said Mphoko, chair of the Choppies retail chain, was a wealthy businessman who could afford to buy his wife a property that suits her fancies.

The budget consultations were conducted by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Economic Development last Wednesday.

Asked one resident: “Has VP’s stay in hotel been budgeted for?” “I think that money could have been used to build a school or a clinic for the benefit of poor Zimbabweans,” he added.

“The government is failing to pay school fees for children under BEAM (Basic Education Assistance Module) yet one man is chewing such an amount.”

Other residents weighed in, virtually turning the meeting into a public inquiry into the vice president’s hotel stay. The chairperson of the parliamentary committee to threaten to kick out from the meeting residents who continued to talk about Mphoko’s accommodation.

But that only frayed tempers.

“VP Mphoko, as a national leader, could have used that money to renovate old state houses to his wife’s satisfaction,” said one woman. “That money is even enough to build a mansion if he cares about this country’s financial situation,” shouted another.

A well-known figure among those attending the meeting then intervened, telling the legislators to allow people to speak their minds.

Zimbabwe Centre for Business Opportunities leader, Paddington Japajapa, told the officials that the issue was of national concern. “Don’t tell people how to speak,” he said.

“That’s why this country is where it is today because it is being led by people who don’t want to take views from members of the public seriously.”