adminFortunate Gora Mashonaland West Correspondent
THE District Development Fund (DDF) is working to ensure that President Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is Open for Business” policy benefits everyone through rural and urban infrastructural development. Speaking at a National Integrated Result-based Management Strategic Planning Workshop in Darwendale last week, secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet in charge of the DDF and related infrastructure, Mr James Jonga said the new dispensation will not prosper without proper infrastructure facilities.
DDF has added urban infrastructure development to its responsibility of developing rural community infrastructural.
“This is why you have found DDF going beyond the issues of rural development and even addressing issues of urban infrastructural development, he said.
“If you can now find it easy to access Mukwati Building by road, Kaguvi Building by road, it is not because of the City Council (but) it is because of DDF efforts.”
Regardless of limited resources, Mr Jonga said DDF had spread its wings to include fighting cholera outbreaks that affected some urban centres across Zimbabwe last year.
DDF provided safe and clean water in rural areas as well as in some Government buildings in Harare’s central business district (CBD) such as Mkwati and Kaguvi.
“We take pride in ensuring that there is no cholera in the rural areas, said Mr Jonga. We are the ones who championed the provision of safe drinking water to the marginalized areas of our country.
“We have also tried to do the same in urban areas after discovering that most of our staff were being affected by the cholera outbreak we went out of our way and provided safe water to the Government complexes, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals and the Harare Central Hospital.”
Mr Jonga encouraged the DDF directorate to unify their workforce and ensure that all projects are fully implemented in all its various departments.
He said public works should continue improving rural people’s livelihoods.
“These are the ones which look after the disadvantaged in the rural areas some of whom may be at the verge of facing a severe drought and they have to find some means of survival,” he said.
The workshop, being attended by top officials from the DDF and the Public Works Department, is meant to reposition the department as a critical player in the discharge of mandated national public works duties such as roads and water among others.
It also seeks to reinvigorate the importance of the public works program to look after the disadvantaged while accelerating infrastructure development in the rural areas.
It also seeks to address projects of a “hot-spot nature” within the resuscitated National Task Force where DDF occupies the deputy chair position.
Online Reporter