Harare — Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Deputy Minister Tongai Matutu has said more money should be channelled to people living with disability than to those living with HIV who may have contributed in getting the virus.

Speaking at the launch of the National Youth Policy Review on Monday, Deputy Minister Matutu said: "It takes a lot of effort for one to get infected by the virus. We should instead consider supporting disabled people because they did not contribute in their getting disabled."

The statement drew a muted response from the audience. Yesterday, the secretary for Zimbabwe Activists Against HIV/Aids, Mr Bernard Nyathi, said the deputy minister was "offside".

"People can get HIV in the home without putting in any effort. It doesn't make sense that a Government official can actually utter such words. "We have orphans who need support and we think the deputy minister is saying they should die. It makes us wonder what he is up to," he said.

Zimbabwe National Network for People Living with HIV executive director, Dr Tabona Shoko, said the blame game should stop. "No one puts effort in getting Aids because it can be contracted from various sources. The basic problem is of moralising and there is prejudice informing such comments," Dr Shoko said.

In an interview yesterday, Deputy Minister Matutu sought to clarify his earlier statement: "I was saying budgets should also consider other sectors like disabled people who have been overlooked for a long time.

"Realistically if you look at disability you don't apply. I was just provoking a thought on what Government should do to help the disabled who have been neglected over the years."

In 2007, the then MDC-T legislator for Mabvuku-Tafara, Mr Timothy Mubhawu, stirred a hornets' nest when he suggested that people living with HIV be quarantined and denied access to life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs.