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Wallace Ruzvidzo, Herald Reporter
The Government is making concerted efforts towards ensuring real-time dissemination of information, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister, Dr Jenfan Muswere, has said.
Speaking at an engagement in Bulawayo last week, Dr Muswere said it was important that people are kept abreast of developments as and when they happen.
This would better equip Zimbabweans to defend, protect and advance national interests.
“Our mandate is to ensure that we inform the nation and also to build national consciousness, which also deals with our identity as a people, our heritage as a people, and also for us to be empowered in terms of knowledge and information to defend, protect and advance our nation,” Dr Muswere said.
“Our vision is to ensure that we are a real-time disseminator of information across the country and also globally.
“So as we journey towards Vision 2030, as we introduce policy and legislation, we have also taken care of domestic mobilisation, which in the majority of cases requires Treasury concurrence.”
The Minister said it was equally important that Zimbabweans are fed first-hand information, rather than secondary information peddled by people from outside the country.
“The moment we allow Zimbabweans to be influenced in terms of information dissemination by other jurisdictions, we might be having a total of 15 to 16 million people in our country, but the information they consume becomes a cultural bomb which can contaminate the heritage, which can contaminate the way we see things and the way we make decisions in our country.
“So, it is very important for us to be able to separate the constitutional and ministerial mandates that we have in that the Ministry of Finance’s major responsibility is resource mobilisation as well,” Dr Muswere said.
He outlined what is required to ensure the smooth dissemination of information.
Dr Muswere said given the reality that information is cross-cutting and that for people within Zimbabwe to be able to know about Mpox and the success stories by President Mnangagwa, there is a need for a functional broadcaster, a functional signal carrier and a fully functional modern and digital broadcasting authority to monitor the quality of service and entirety of the sector.
“Some of the interventions in terms of cost-cutting measures include infrastructure sharing with the energy sector, with city councils and at the same time with the ICT sector,” he said.
Capacitation of relevant entities is also a top priority in the information-sharing matrix.
“Yes, it is true, misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, the coming on board of international information imperialism and social media platforms, which alter geographical borders in terms of territorial integrity and sovereignty, has ensured that anyone can post any message from any jurisdiction and it’s still regarded as information in terms of social media.
“So these institutions should be capacitated through Zim Digital so that we achieve media sovereignty and information ubiquity in our country.
“Yes, the coming on board of the licencing framework which has allowed Starlink, also supports the Zim Digital project and infrastructure sharing has been ongoing between broadcasting and the ICT sectors,” said Dr Muswere.
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