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Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
Minister of State for Midlands Provincial Affairs Larry Mavima will set up an ad-hoc provincial advisory council comprising  experts from the health, mining, social services, education and civic society to assist in the running of the province.

Minister Mavima said the ad-hoc provincial advisory council will among other tasks craft a five-year strategic plan to address issues in the province as well as devising strategies of developing the province and ensuring food security at household level.

He said the province should contribute significantly to the country’s gross domestic product.

“As a new minister the first port of call is to acquaint myself with issues in the province. I have decided to set up an ad-hoc provincial advisory council comprised of experts from different sectors of the economy.

“The purpose of this ad-hoc committee is to bring ideas together. These experts will be drawn from health, mining, social services, education, civic society sectors. I have realised that as a minister I cannot do it alone. We need to share ideas and complement efforts in developing the province,” he said.

Minister Mavima said there was need to immediately revive industries in the province and attract investors.

He said there were anchor projects such as Shabanie Mine, ZimAlloys, Zisco Steel and many others that had the potential to turn around the country’s economy.

Minister Mavima said the revival of these companies will also go a long way in addressing unemployment in the province.

He said on the five-year strategic plan for the province, the experts will proffer solutions to cushion and bail out all companies that are either limping or have shut down in the province.

“What we intent to do is to sit down with the mining community and establish the problems that they are facing that disable them from operating on full capacity.

“The mining sector in the province has a great potential of creating unemployment.

“We also want to ensure that all artisanal miners formerly makorokoza are registered and they start contributing to the fiscus.

“All companies will also make suggestions on how they want to turn around their fortunes. We want to meet or surpass President Mnangagwa’s vision of making the company a middle income economy by 2030. This cannot be achieved single handedly,” he said.