The Sunday News
THE Ministry of Indigenisation, Youth and Economic Empowerment will remodel Community Share Ownership Trusts (CSOTs) to sustainably empower communities to beneficiate and add value to locally available resources.
Indigenisation, Youth and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao said there was a need for Government to ensure that companies that were identified to contribute towards the CSOTs are adequately financing the schemes, but hinted that communities should aim at utilising the funds obtained through the facility to add value to resources within their areas of jurisdiction for income generating purposes.
Since 2011, the ministry has established 61 CSOTs in Rural District Councils in various parts of the country with 20 of them having been financed to date.
“We are part of the process of developing a National Economic Empowerment Strategy, which is to locate CSOTs as magnates for investment and economic empowerment within the various communities they operate within. For example if you take communities where they have significant amounts of mangoes or guavas, CSOTs could utilise that particular resource so that communities are able to benefit from the development or establishment of processing plants for such resources that are available in the community,” Minister Zhuwao said.
He said CSOTs should also assist in seeking viable markets for products that would have been manufactured or obtained from their areas.
“If you look at communities where for example you have mopane worms (amacimbi), the CSOT could assist in establishing viable marketing channels for such a resource in towns,” Minister Zhuwao said.
He said since being appointed as a minister he was yet to embark on a fact finding mission to determine which CSOTs have benefited their communities.
“I’m still to look at where it (CSOT) has benefited and where it hasn’t benefited but I think the issue is to look at is the processes that we are going through which are developing a National Economic Empowerment Strategy that is anchored on the opportunities that exist in each and every district. So we are doing this in a more rigorous and systematic manner so that we then don’t have a lot of people bickering,” Minister Zhuwao said.
He also said the ministry was also in the process of establishing provincial and district Youth Council boards in an effort to ensure that issues and aspirations of the youths are effectively addressed.
“One of the things we have done is the establishment or decentralisation of the Zimbabwe Youth Council in a manner that we are in the process of establishing provincial and district boards,” Minister Zhuwao said.
