Category: News Feeds

Speaking during a community meeting held by the Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) in Rugare on Wednesday, Matione said the government had failed to honour its obligation in terms of water provision.

He bemoaned that the situation in Harare was getting worse while the government was busy playing politics.

“I would like to put the record straight and tell you that it is the government that is responsible for the construction of water sources such as dams. In light of the water challenges in Harare, it is the government that must honour its obligation and construct other water sources as a way of saving the situation,” said Matione.

He said that the government’s failure to construct the Kunzvi dam, which would have eased Harare’s water woes was a matter of concern.

“Lake Chivero has been overwhelmed by demand and we should not be given excuses of low water levels because even if the lake is filled to capacity, we will still continue to experience water challenges.

“We are supplying water to Harare Chitungwiza, Norton and Morton Jaffray water treatment plant has a capacity of 800 mega liters per day yet we require 1 200 mega liters per day. So Lake Chivero is already overwhelmed hence the need for the government to construct more water sources, said Matione.

CHRA has made calls for the government to declare the water situation in Harare a disaster in order to pave way for humanitarian assistance. The residents’ association is also on record saying that it was irresponsible for the government to play politics and shift blame while residents continue to sit on a health time bomb.

Councilor Matione reiterated CHRA’s position that the government should source funding from the donor community as a way of dealing with Harare’s water crisis.

“In light of the impending disaster, it is mandatory for the government to declare the water situation a disaster so that we get the required assistance. If we had the powers we would have declared the situation a disaster to pave way for assistance.,” said Matione.

Harare City Council official, Mercy Makuvatsine emphasized that the solution to Harare’s water woes lies in constructing more water sources and highlighted that in the face of limited resources, the government ought to declare a disaster.

CHRA Programmes Officer, Answer Tafadzwa Moyana rallied residents to support CHRA’s efforts in petitioning the government to declare the water situation in Harare a disaster.

Post published in: Featured

The term was used to boast about the agricultural output of
Zimbabwe and its ability to not only feed its people but to have enough to
export as well. As the years went by however, the breadbasket soon became a
begging basket. Today, the World Food Program (WFP) says that 63% of
Zimbabweans live below the poverty datum line with 27% of children having
stunted growth because of unbalanced diets. The WFP also says that up-to
5.5million people will be food insecure in Zimbabwe by January 2020.

Theme and Statistics

This year’s theme for World Food Day is “Healthy Diets for a #ZeroHunger
World”. This theme promotes Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 which seeks
to end world hunger and malnutrition by the year 2030. This year, the goal
is to make countries rethink how they grow food, how they share food and how
they consume food. The theme seeks to raise awareness on how a large
population of the world suffers from hunger and malnutrition. The theme
calls for promotion in sustainable agriculture, supporting small-scale
farmers, access to land as well as technology to improve production.

At present, Zimbabwe is ranked 109th out of 117 countries on the Global
Hunger Index citing that the hunger situation in Zimbabwe is serious. One in
four children under the age of five are said to be vitamin A deficient by
UNICEF while 60% of women are said to be anaemic in the country. According
to FAO, unhealthy diets are one of the leading risks for deaths from non
communicable diseases including heart attacks, diabetes and certain cancers.
Food security and adequate nutrition are important factors in our day to day
lives that cannot be ignored.

Constitutional Obligation

Section 15 of the Zimbabwean Constitution obliges the state to promote the
growing and storage of adequate food, to secure the establishment of
adequate food reserves and encourage and promote proper nutrition. The
government is to take heed of this mandate and is to be remembered that the
constitution is after all, the supreme law of the land. Exercising section
15 is not an option – it is a must.

Following this mandate and keeping in line with the requirements of the
theme, the Zimbabwean government is reminded that investment in agriculture
is crucial. At present, the lead program in agriculture is Command
Agriculture. As the government carries out this program and land audits it
is reminded that land distribution is to be free and fair, without prejudice
and without favour. The government is reminded that rural women make the
bulk of small scale farmers that feed at least 67% of the Zimbabwean
population and as such rural women should not be forgotten when being
granted land and being given incentives. As the theme mandates States to
guarantee access to food, the Zimbabwean government is encouraged to address
the food price crisis and take measures for food to be affordable and
accessible to all.

Time to Rethink

Zimbabwe must rethink the farming methods that are currently in use. Time
and again the rains have proven to be an unreliable source of irrigation –
the time to re-strategise has come. With the ever changing climate, Zimbabwe
needs to adapt and change present outdated methods and technologies to be
able to meet the hunger and nutritional requirements of its people. Adapting
new methods is one way of tackling the crisis we are in but transparency in
initiatives and incentives is also another area we need to focus on and
improve in order to reduce malnutrition and hunger overall. Ministries are
encouraged to cooperate with Parliamentary Portfolio Committees in order to
make sure Command Agriculture works for us and not against us.

With as much arable land as Zimbabwe has, hunger and malnutrition do not
have to be part of the Zimbabwean narrative. It is time to steer the
narrative from a begging basket back to being the breadbasket.

Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take
legal responsibility for information supplied.

Post published in: Agriculture

Back in April, the insurance giant rolled out a voluntary retrenchment scheme as a way of managing costs in “response to the deteriorating economic environment.” Few employees accepted.

The response to the voluntary retrenchment scheme was below expectations, said chief executive officer Jonas Mushosho in a memo to employees on Tuesday. Mushosho said it was imperative that the company reduce its costs of doing business due to relentless economic challenges in Zimbabwe.

Given the high the high inflation rate and the need to control total operating costs, it is important for the business to reduce costs, said Mushosho.

“Management is, therefore, tabling an offer for a voluntary staff retrenchment scheme on an improved package,” the memo said.

He said management would endeavour to conclude the current round of retrenchments timeously in order to preserve the value of the package.

Zimbabwe is officially experiencing hyperinflation, it was announced last week. The country is also facing regular fuel price hikes, data price hikes, and its worst drought in almost four decades.

Post published in: Business

Calling All Legal Ops Leaders: The 2019 LDO Survey Is Live

Calling All Legal Ops Leaders: The 2019 LDO Survey Is Live

LDO and Above the Law

Calling All Legal Ops Leaders: The 2019 LDO Survey Is Live

Calling All Legal Ops Leaders: The 2019 LDO Survey Is Live

LDO and Above the Law

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If the legal profession is ever going to become meaningfully diverse, it has got to be everyone’s issue. Not just women or people of color, but everyone that wants a more diverse profession has to make it a priority.

That’s the attitude Mayer Brown partner Chris Arnold has. The capital markets and derivatives partner was recently placed on the Chambers UK 2020 ranking of solicitors as one of the best in the practice area. The only problem? He was one of 17 men on the list, with only one woman cracking the ranking. So Arnold took to social media (LinkedIn, because, lawyers, whatcha gonna do?) putting Chambers on blast for the lack of diversity in the rankings. He also attached an open letter (below) to Chambers asking that his name get pulled from the ranking and letting them know he wouldn’t be included until the list was at least 25 percent women.

As reported by Legal Cheek, Chambers has responded to the debacle and will, in the future, include diversity information in their rankings submissions:

Chambers and Partners has also released a detailed statement on its diversity and inclusion work. CEO Tim Noble said that, looking over the past ten years worth of rankings, 30.6% of those featured at partner level in the UK were women.

He added that “Chambers will be requesting D&I-related information as part of the submissions process from the 2020/2021 research cycles and this data will now be assessed as part of the overall Chambers research and editorial. This will apply to all of our guides and include all strands of diversity”.

This is a super important lesson for the venerable ranking — you can’t just cross your fingers and hope diversity works out. It takes everyone working to see real results.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sutter Health has reached a tentative settlement agreement in a closely watched antitrust case brought by self-funded employers and later joined by the California Attorney General’s Office. The agreement was announced in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday morning, just moments before opening statements were expected to begin.

While representatives for both sides confirmed they had reached a tentative settlement, they would not divulge details of the agreement, which must be approved by the court. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo told the jury impaneled for the case that details likely would be made public during approval hearings in February or March.

There were audible cheers from the jury following the announcement that the trial, which was expected to last three months, would not continue. Officials with the attorney general’s office and Sutter Health declined requests for comment.

Sutter stood accused of violating California’s antitrust laws by using its market power to illegally drive up prices. Health care costs in Northern California, where Sutter is dominant, are 20 percent to 30 percent higher than in Southern California, even after adjusting for cost of living, according to a 2018 study from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California-Berkeley that was cited in the complaint.

The case was a massive undertaking, encompassing years of work and millions of pages of documents, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said beforehand. If the plaintiffs prevailed, Sutter was expected to face damages of up to $2.7 billion.

The nonprofit giant has 24 hospitals, 34 surgery centers and 5,500 physicians across Northern California, with $13 billion in operating revenue in 2018. The state’s lawsuit alleged Sutter has aggressively bought up hospitals and physician practices throughout the Bay Area and Northern California and exploited that market dominance for profit.

Among other tactics, it accused Sutter of employing an “all-or-none” approach to contracting with insurance companies, demanding that an insurer that wanted to include any one of the Sutter hospitals or clinics in its network must include all of them — even if some of those facilities were more expensive than a competitor.

Sutter Health consistently denied the allegations, saying its large, integrated health system offers tangible benefits for patients, including more seamless, high-quality care and increased access for residents in rural areas. Sutter also disputed that its prices are higher than other major health care providers, saying its internal analyses tell a different story.

The case was expected to have nationwide implications on how hospital systems negotiate prices with insurers. Even with details of the agreement not yet public, attorneys and patient advocates said they expect the settlement to mark a pivotal moment.

David Balto, a former federal regulator who is now an antitrust lawyer in Washington D.C., called the developments “precedent-setting.”

“You have all these metropolitan markets where you have large hospital systems, but Sutter Health in the Bay Area is like the filet mignon of the problem,” Balto said. “The problems in San Francisco are bigger than anywhere else. And you see that in how Sutter has exploited its market power to the nth degree.”

Sutter’s tactics were hard to challenge under antitrust law, Balto added. But “what [Becerra] did was bring together hard facts with top-notch scholarship proving there was an overwhelming problem and that Sutter’s strong-arm tactics were the cause of the problem.”

Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California, said he wasn’t privy to the settlement details, but that he expected it to include “some meaningful remedies in terms of adjusting some of the anti-competitive practices and contract provisions that Sutter has advanced over the years.”

“While we await the details of the settlement,” he said, “the lawsuit itself sends a strong signal to hospital chains across the nation and all health care providers planning to adopt predatory prices.”

Jaime King, associate dean and a professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law, said Sutter’s decision to settle “in some ways is not a surprise. On the eve of trial, we often see big settlements.”

Still, she said, it comes at a cost: “I think it’s a shame we won’t ever get to see the evidence that would have been brought forward in this case about Sutter’s contracting and pricing practices. There are a lot of very large health systems that are charging a lot of money for their services, and this case had the opportunity to give us much more insight into what we’re spending our health care dollars on.”

Sutter continues to face trial on a separate federal antitrust lawsuit.

Photo: artisteer, Getty Images

Every few years there’s one of these stories where some attorney seeks and — improbably — is granted a stay so they can watch their team. Generally speaking, it’s a championship game appearance that requires travel to a neutral site and necessarily puts the lawyer out of pocket on the day of a hearing. What doesn’t generally show up is an attorney seeking a filing extension to watch games on television.

The Department of Justice consented to the motion, which Judge Collyer granted. I suppose the sport itself is all about dragging things out unnecessarily, so this is very on brand.

Zoe Tillman captured the relevant language of the motion in a tweet.

The attorney, citing a desire to continue watching the Washington Nationals playoff run with a nine-year-old, wrote that, “The nine-year old and counsel wish to continue to stay up late watching baseball and to attend tomorrow’s game, if it is necessary. Counsel’s attendance at each is required for supervision.” Except the game wasn’t necessary because the Nats swept the series. Get your ass back to work, buddy!

Facetiousness aside, it’s worth taking a second to consider what this motion says about the state of modern litigation. If we’ve reached a point where the standard briefing deadlines can’t accommodate taking four hours from time to time to watch a game, we’ve got more serious problems as a profession. We shouldn’t have to rely on judicial intervention to achieve the bare minimum of work-life balance.

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Every Alabama Lawyer Should Try the ‘BCS Defense’

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.