The Sunday News
Noble Ncube, Business Reporter
THE Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development is set to open more technical centres throughout the country to steer up innovation among Small to Medium Enterprises.
There are just two technical centres in Zimbabwe, Harare and Bulawayo.
The centres help SMEs to increase their proficiency in practical skills and be technologically innovative.
Apart from technical centres there are also 13 common facility centres spread around the country.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mrs Evelyn Ndlovu said it was important for communities to be skilled practically because this would contribute to employment opportunities.
“We are working on the modalities of opening more technical centres. At the moment we only have two technical centres in Harare and Bulawayo, so we want to open more and spread them around the country. We want to empower communities through skills development. We have since realised that some of the communities we are operating in are not innovative, so we want to help them to be self dependant and not wait for handouts.
“We are putting those machines to create entrepreneurship and to promote community development. If you realise there are still more children who drop out of school to go and look for work in neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa. As a ministry we want to train all those together with school leavers and others who might be interested in skills capacity building and entrepreneurship,” said Mrs Ndlovu.
She said while the country was improving from the economic challenges that resulted in more than three million people leaving the country for greener pastures, school going children were the imperative age to utilise for broader and long term economic development.
“We need to work on the psychology of children at both primary and secondary level and guide them to economic and business prosperity. They should not opt to go to South Africa and work in restaurants, bakeries, salons, bars and night clubs. We also have all those facilities here, so why not teach them skills that will develop them into being innovative in various industries. We should start training these children while they are young. We call upon parents and teachers to teach children to save money and be business minded. Confidence and perseverance are important to driving anyone into successful business,” she said.
ZITF general manager Nomathemba Ndlovu praised the SMEs who exhibited at this year’s fair.
She said SMEs were the backbone of the economy and her organisation was committed to work with more SMEs in the future.
“We believe in SMEs because they are the backbone of our economy. We have been working with them over the years to improve the quality of their products and exhibition stands. The judges who were accessing stands recommended that SMEs were doing better in their stands. As a result we are committed to help improve their displays and facilitate building of more relationships with different buyers,” she said.
