Andrew
Sunday Mail Reporter
Treasury must disburse adequate funding for the broadcasting digital migration project to improve information dissemination in marginalised communities and help preserve Zimbabwe’s cultural values, a Cabinet Minister has said.
The Zimbabwe Digitisation Programme is geared towards migrating the country’s broadcasting services from analogue to digital.
Speaking during Parliament’s 2023 Pre-Budget Seminar in Harare yesterday, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the digitisation programme was being bogged down by inadequate funding.
“When we talk about the 2023 Budget envelope, the ministry was allocated a budget ceiling of $5,3 billion against a bid of $73,4 billion, resulting in a gap of $68 billion,” said Minister Mutsvangwa.
“The $5,5 billion is supposed to cater for the ministry’s operations and yet it is creating a deficit of 93 percent. Our ambition as a ministry is to complete the digitisation project in three years, but given the budgetary support of $1,5 billion against the $23,6 billion required for that project, we will only be able to purchase one transmitter.”
While the Ministry of Information is expected to complete digital migration of broadcasting services by 2025, she said, it would take more than 30 years to complete the project at current funding levels.
“This means that we will have communities in our countries that will not be covered by transmission and being denied access to information,” she added.
“We are also going against the good tenets of universal access to information and ensuring access to information of marginalised communities.”
Minister Mutsvangwa said failure to adequately fund the project, which is already seven years behind schedule, was against President Mnangagwa’s mantra of leaving no one and no place behind.
“While we established 18 transmitters, those are fully complete and digitised, we know that our citizens are not fully benefiting from them because they need set-top boxes to access television, and we are saying 18 transmitters have been fully digitised and fully paid for,” she said.
“What we need are the set-top boxes so that people can start benefiting fully from the dividends of what Government has invested in.
“The project is far behind and needs to be expedited, as a slow approach will result in technology changing before finalisation. Skills in this area are very mobile globally and slow pace of implementation may result in the project losing critical skills.”
Online Reporter