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Farirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter

Underfunding and delays in disbursements of budgetary allocations is negatively affecting the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services and parastatals under its ambit from effectively carrying out its mandate, Permanent Secretary in the ministry Mr Nick Mangwana has said.

He said this when he appeared before the Portfolio Committee on Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services with representatives of ZBC, Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, Transmedia and the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust, also in attendance.

“Our current major challenge is we have the digitalisation project which started around 2014 and was supposed to have been finished a long time ago, but because of funding challenges, we haven’t made too much progress because of foreign currency issues.

“This project is being run by all three parastatals which are the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, Transmedia Corporation and the ZBC, but the lead agency is BAZ, the regulator.

“We also have a challenge that some of our infrastructure is made up of outdated equipment so it poses a challenge in radio transmission, it poses a challenge in TV reception and even in the production department at ZBC,” he said.

Mr Mangwana said they had consistently submitted budgets that they thought would be enough for them to improve the broadcasting sector but had not been supported.

“This year was the year in which we got something a bit more sensible in that we were not the least funded ministry,” he added.

He also bemoaned the late disbursements of their budgetary allocations despite them falling short of their needs.

Mr Mangwana added that the ministry had recruited staff to fill all the country’s 63 districts, but were hamstrung in their operations due to lack of resources.

“This not only affects communities, but you as MPs and Government,” he said.

Responding to questions from the MPs, Transmedia chief executive officer Engineer Adonia Mushosho said the illegal sanctions imposed on the country were negatively affecting their ability to procure equipment and retain skilled personnel.

“Transmedia, being the most capital-intensive baby in the ministry, we do have a lot of our equipment imported.

“We require forex and we have very little access to markets and when we have access, the equipment is sold at a very high premium and we become uncompetitive.”

“Sanctions have affected the environment and we are losing our technical skills,” he said.

ZBC chief executive Ms Adelaide Chikunguru said they were now generating enough revenues to fund their daily operations including salaries although they were still reliant on Government funding for capital expenditure.

“We did get an allocation this year, for which we are grateful which is a grant of some $2 billion against a requirement of $192 billion which was to go towards capacitation of television studios and unfortunately its not going to go very far,” she said.