Give back to communities, business leaders urged Mr Deketeke
Mr Deketeke

Mr Deketeke

Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
ZIMPAPERS group chief executive officer Mr Pikirayi Deketeke has urged the corporate sector and business leaders to give back to the communities that raised them. He made the remarks yesterday during a speech and prize-giving ceremony held at Mukai High School in Highfield, Harare, where he was the guest speaker. Mr Deketeke is also an alumni of the school.

“We were walking around the classrooms and we were seeing falling ceilings. I was being shown the Woodwork shop, the equipment that was there probably around the 1970s. Some of my colleagues whom I get in touch with are abroad and we are always assuming that it is okay. The Government or somebody else is taking care of where we came from.

“I believe we have a responsibility as former students of Mukai, as parents of Mukai and also as the neighbourhood to look after our school and to make a difference in this day and age. A lot of us in our generation when we were growing up we found things done, the roads were done, water was available, the houses and churches were done, so we never got to understand the responsibility that we have in terms of developing our country — our own institutions.

“Coming here today made me realise that there is much more that we need to do. We need to give back to where we came from because that education, that seed that we were given, was to ensure that we make a difference in what we do. Hence, I would like to urge the corporate world and prominent business leaders to play their part in giving back to the communities we came from,” he said.

Mr Deketeke donated two laptops and novels to the school worth over $1 600. He said the Zimpapers Group would be working with the school next year to establish how it can help in meeting some of its needs. The school requires a pre-cast wall and has one computer laboratory with very few functional computers.

Out of 29 classrooms, only two have floor tiles. The staff room is old with obsolete furniture and broken pelmets. Classrooms have broken louvres and the Geography Weather Station has no instruments.

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