Commuters were yesterday stranded in Zimbabwe’s two main cities as angry protesters reacted to fuel prices more than doubling over the weekend by burning tires, barricading roads with rocks and blocking buses from carrying passengers.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Saturday announced a more than 100 percent rise in the price of gasoline and diesel in a move to improve supplies.
Residents in Epworth, a poor suburb east of Harare, yesterday woke up to find boulders blocking roads leading to the city center.
Photo: AP
“It’s tense since early morning,” Epworth resident Nhamo Tembo said. “Roads are blocked with huge stones and there are angry people preventing commuter buses from carrying passengers.”
In the city of Bulawayo, demonstrators attacked minibuses heading to the city center, and used burning tires and stones to block the main routes into town.
“We want Mnangagwa to know our displeasure in his failure,” Mthandazo Moyo, 22, said.
In a TV address late on Saturday, Mnangagwa said that prices of gasoline and diesel would be hiked to tackle a shortfall caused by increased fuel use and “rampant” illegal trading.
Gasoline prices rose from US$1.24 to US$3.31 per liter, with diesel up from US$1.36 to US$3.11 per liter starting on Sunday.
The main labor alliance, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, said that the government had shown a clear lack of empathy for the already overburdened poor.
Mnangagwa, who won a disputed election in July, has announced a package of measures to help state workers after strikes by doctors and teachers over poor pay.
However, the government would come down hard on “elements bent on taking advantage of the current fuel shortages to cause and sponsor unrest,” he said.
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