admin
Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The Beitbridge Municipality has started rolling out comprehensive training programmes for its employees in a bid to address gender bias, discrimination, and inequality.
The move will go a long way in promoting gender awareness, understanding, and sensitivity among the council workers and creating a more inclusive and equitable work environment.
Acting town clerk Mr Sathulani Moyo said the first training was carried out a few weeks ago with the help of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission.
He said they were looking at increasing the number of female employees at the local authority from 22,5 percent to above 30 percent at all levels.
“We recently carried out a training of council employees at Ha-Bangale Business Centre, where they were assisted by the Zimbabwe Gender Commission,” said Mr Moyo.
“Our idea is to give a general understanding and awareness among our employees, including management, councillors, junior employees and supervisor staff.
A total of 19 people were trained on the gender legal framework, gender-based violence and sexual harassment at the workplace. Out of the 19, 10 were female employees picked from across all levels starting from general hands to management.”
He said the process was being facilitated by the gender focal person within the local authority.
Mr Moyo said previously they would get facilitators from the legal fraternity but this time they opted to use the Zimbabwe Gender Commission to bring a different dimension to the training programme.
He added that they intend to create awareness for employees both at the workplace and in their general standings.
“We have a total of 399 employees and 90 of them are women. This means that around 22.5 percent of the workforce are women. Most of them are not at senior level and like any other institution, we intend to push so that the representation grows to above 30
percent of women in top management positions. At the moment we have quite a number at supervisor and management level.”
The latest move by the municipality is also in line with the Zimbabwe Local Government Association’s vision of increasing women’s participation in local government politics and decision-making.
Online Reporter