COMMENT: CSOTs concept needs revisiting and perfection

A leading tourism company, African Walk Safaris has started providing ox-drawn ploughs to families in Hwange district in Matabeleland North to assist the families boost crop production.

The owner of the company Mr Kaz Dube said by providing the families with farming implements, his company was ploughing back to the communities that have supported it over the years.

Mr Dube said he expects the communities that were now enjoying proceeds from his tourism business to reciprocate by assisting in fighting poaching in the area. The Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) spokesperson Mr Godfrey Koti commended the company for ensuring communities benefited from their natural resources such as wildlife.

He urged other companies exploiting natural resources to also ensure locals benefit from their resources. What African Walk Safaris is doing dovetails with the concept of Community Share Ownership Trusts (CSOTs) which were established by Government in different areas around 2013/14 but seem not to be active now.

The CSOTs were meant to ensure local communities benefit directly from the exploitation of their natural resources such as minerals, timber and wildlife.

A number of communities benefited from CSOTs that provided funding for a number of development projects.

Companies exploiting resources in given areas provided seed capital to the trusts which then implemented development projects.

Some of the companies that participated in the scheme are Zimplats, Unki Mines and Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) and the seed money provided by these companies which ran into millions of dollars was used to fund construction of schools, dams, bridges, rehabilitation of road networks and other projects.

Now that the Government is pushing for devolution of power and responsibilities to provinces, there might be a need to revisit the concept of CSOTs which probably just needs some perfection.

Under devolution provinces are supposed to come up with their development priority lists and then use resources in their respective areas to fund development which was the objective of CSOTs.