Groceries, hardware items worth thousands destroye...

Groceries, hardware items worth thousands destroyed by fire

Audrey Galawu

Several shop owners were left devastated after fire gutted several outlets at Manyame Complex, in Chitungwiza, destroying groceries and hardware items worth thousands of dollars.

The fire reportedly broke out on Friday night around 10pm due to a suspected electrical fault when power was restored in the area following an outage.

The fire started in one shop but quickly spread to four other shops, including grocery shops, a butchery and hardware outlets.

Proprietor of Onward Trading, Polite Mutikido, said they do not know exactly how the fire started as they were home when the incident happened.

She also said when fire fighters rushed to the scene, the inferno had destroyed everything.

“We were called by the guards because we had already gone home. When we got to the shop, most things had already been destroyed by the fire. We could not salvage anything from the shop.

Edmore Matombo of Glossam Trading, a hardware shop, told ZimNow that approximately 900 bags of Rhinoset cement and tiles were destroyed by the fire.

Another hardware shop at the complex had about three truck-loads of PPC cement in stock at the time of the fire.

Efforts by ZimNow to get comment from the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police Chitungwiza were fruitless.