adminFarirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter
GOVERNMENT should introduce mining as a practical subject in schools curricular if the indigenisation programme is to be successfully implemented, Shamva South Member of the House of Assembly Cde Joseph Mapiki has said. He said this on Tuesday while contributing to debate on President Mugabe’s speech during the official opening of the First Session of the Eighth Parliament of Zimbabwe last month.
“There is a need to introduce practical subjects at an early stage in our education system. We used to have such a system before independence and it would cater for the academically disadvantaged students.
“We can adopt a similar system specifically targeting mining, which was mentioned by the President as one of the critical sectors in reviving the economy through the contributions it is making,” he said. In his speech President Mugabe acknowledged the importance of the mining sector to the country’s economy after it contributed over 35 percent to the Gross Domestic Product and has been identified as an important sector.
Under the indigenisation policies being pursued by the Zanu-PF Government after it won the elections resoundingly on July 31, the mining sector has also been identified as a sector that has to be indigenised to ensure communities benefit from their resources.
Cde Mapiki said it was also critical that Government seriously look at value addition of minerals as foreigners were benefiting the most from minerals mined locally and exported in their raw form.
Contributing to the same debate Zvishavane Ngezi representative, Cde John Holder, said there was also a need for Government to come up with policies that benefited small-scale miners, saying the current “one-size-fits-all” policies were holding back the growth of the sector.
Online Reporter