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Fidelis Munyoro Chief Reporter

Government’s strategic planning convention to come up with a work plan for the information and media sector that seeks to strengthen the attainment of the national vision held this week on the outskirts of Norton ended on a high note yesterday.

Information is one of the supreme enablers imperative for the country to attain Vision 2030.

Speaking at the close of the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services’ 2020 strategic planning workshop, Deputy Minister Energy Mutodi was confident that the workshop produced a strategy that will guide the operations for this year and help in team building.

The ministry, supported by parastatals and civic society groups in the information and media sector, met over the past three days to come up with the ministry’s strategy for 2020.

“It is thus fitting that the ministry’s vision is to be a real time disseminator of Zimbabwean information locally and globally supporting the national vision to be an upper middle-income economy by 2030,” said Deputy Minister Mutodi.

“Our mission is moulding lasting national consciousness that defends, upholds and promotes Zimbabwe’s founding values, identity, and its interests worldwide.

“This will be achieved through a modern, diverse, and participatory information and communication industry accessible to the world using the best business practices and technological means.”

In its key result areas, the ministry will be focusing on information and publicity, media regulation, and, corporate governance.

The strategic plan, Deputy Minister Mutodi said, also seeks among other deliverables to inform the nation for better decision-making by facilitating a two-way communication between Government and its people as managing the national image and brand internationally for national competitiveness.

“It also seeks to create an enabling media environment by adopting best practices in regulating and facilitating the media sector as well is putting in place state-of-the-art infrastructure for effective national communication,” he said.

“To this end, the media law reforms that we have been seized with come to mind and I am happy that a lot was achieved in 2019.”

Turning on infrastructure development, Deputy Minister Mutodi said it was important to think outside the box for them to conclude the digitisation project.

The project, he said, was way behind schedule owing to inadequate funding and a difficult economic and financial environment.

“The accomplishment of our goals in the difficult economic environment whose cause we are all familiar with calls for an efficient, flexible, innovative and supportive finance, administration and human resources department whilst guaranteeing good and effective corporate governance practices,” he said.

The deputy minister said the success of the ministry was to a great extent highly dependent on effective team building.