The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Reporter
Local life assurance company, Nyaradzo Group, spread its tentacles to the UK, officially opening a new branch at a ceremony presided over by Zimbabwe Ambassador to the UK Colonel Christian Katsande (Retired).
The branch — Nyaradzo House — is located in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, in the home counties of Southern England.
It will serve as the UK home of the business, which currently covers clients in the United Kingdom as well as other European countries where Zimbabweans live and work.
Nyaradzo runs Sahwira International Plan, a Diaspora programme of repatriation for home burials.
It is believed that by being domiciled in the UK, the company would be ably positioned to provide a convenient service to facilitate burials.
“We are proud to be raising the flag of a positive Zimbabwean story in the Diaspora as we assure our nationals living abroad that they can no longer worry about logistical hitches should they have the misfortune of losing a loved one miles away from home. They will know that we are at hand to make their difficult time as bearable as reasonably possible,” said the group chief executive officer Mr Philip Mataranyika.
Present at the ceremony was the area Councillor Amey Allen and Zimbabwe Government representatives who participated in the joint ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The coronavirus has worsened the burden for some families in organising the burial of their relatives.
“We pride ourselves in our core values of being Sahwira Mukuru, Umngane Omkhulu, as this means that we understand the traditional rites of burying people of Zimbabwean and African origin and hence give them a befitting send-off that is sensitive to their cultural expectations,” added Mataranyika.
The expansion programme has seen freshly sited new homes for Nyaradzo elsewhere outside Zimbabwean frontiers, most notably in the Republic of South Africa, as well as the United States, where many Zimbabwean expatriate workers and families have migrated over the years.
The tradition of home burial has improved the appeal of facilities such as Sahwira International Plan.
