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RECONSTRUCTING Zimbabwe may cost as much as $US5 billion ($A7.8 billion), Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said as he opened his hands to neighbouring countries.Mr Tsvangirai was speaking after meeting South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, who has convened the region's finance ministers next week to devise a plan to assist their starving and desperate neighbour."What we are looking for is a short-term intervention to make sure we are jump-starting those institutions that affect people," Mr Tsvangirai said.Mr Tsvangirai, who joined a historic unity government last week with his bitter rival, President Robert Mugabe, warned that long-term reconstruction could "run into billions of dollars, maybe as high as $US5 billion."Our situation is dire. The key priority areas are food, health and education." Schools in Zimbabwe are shut, its economy lies shattered after 29 years of Mugabe rule, and its healthcare system is struggling to cope help with a cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 3750 lives. Nearly 7 million people need food aid. Up to 3 million have fled the country. Unemployment is at 94 per cent and only 20 per cent of children are going to school.Public hospitals are closed, even though 1.3 million people have HIV. A cholera epidemic is ravaging the country, hitting more than 80,000 people across the country since August. Mr Motlanthe said South Africa, chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc, had directed regional finance ministers to develop a plan to help Zimbabwe."They have presented to us their preliminary plan to respond to these challenges which we have agreed to deal with. "There are no figures to speak of, these are going to be crunched by technical people and finance ministers to be meeting on these issues." Mr Tsvangirai said his government would first concentrate on the short-term priorities. Zimbabwe is buckling under economic meltdown, characterised by the world's highest inflation, which had officially soared to 231 million per cent by July. Most essential civil servants, including teachers, nurses and doctors, have been on strike since last year over poor pay. Mr Tsvangirai promised to pay them in US dollars to counter the impact of hyperinflation and said Zimbabwe would use a multi-currency approach in the future, using the South African rand and the US dollar."As we proceed we will see if the Zimbabwe dollar can be re-used again," he said.By Fran Blandy
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
As in the days of Noah...
