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Senior Reporter
The newly-appointed ZBC board is not made up of angels but individuals who have the requisite skills and experience to rescue the national broadcaster from the problems it is facing, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of his tour of Mbira Centre in Harare yesterday,Prof Moyo said the appointment of the new board does show that his ministry is committed to turning around fortunes at the national broadcaster.
Prof Moyo on Monday withdrew Dr Dennis Magaya’s appointment as Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation board chair for his alleged involvement in salary and procurement scandals at national power utility, Zesa.
The ministry had appointed an 11-member board chaired by Dr Magaya (44) to spearhead restructuring and turnaround of the national broadcaster.
Father Gibson Munyoro, a respected Catholic cleric, replaced Dr Magaya.
“We are coming from a difficult situation, facing difficult challenges but open, willing and committed to dealing with these challenges. This board is not a board of angels. We are not going to find angels. It’s just that there are certain things that are totally unacceptable especially anything that suggest the ability of abusing public assets and public funds cannot be accepted.
“We, therefore, must not see this board from the perspective of angels who are perfect. No, I think each and everyone of us has a background and we are human beings precisely because we are imperfect. However, even in our imperfections, there are certain things that are not acceptable or things which our country does not accept or is no longer willing to accept,” he said.
He said the appointees understand that they are coming into a difficult situation with expectations that they have the capacity, moral and technical capacity to deal with it.
Prof Moyo said the board has highly respected people who have demonstrated skills from the point of view of the technology, the ICT and the financial sides.
He said the board would give policy guidance and represent shareholder interest, while ensuring the organisation discharges its national mandate and stays within its mandate.
“The shareholders are the people of this country, the citizens, the residents of this country and they have huge expectations around ZBC against the background of what has happened.
“The interests of the workers, the failure by the organisation to cater for those interests and now the need to come up with a ZBC which will be able to cater for those interests.
“If the organisation is unable to take care of its workers, it obviously will not be able to discharge its mandate,” he said.
Prof Moyo said to achieve this, the broadcaster must have requisite skills and against the background of the digital migration, it should have the necessary technology as pointed out during the visit by the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Media, Information and Broadcasting Services.
“There is quite some focus on the board itself. You saw the response, national response including Zimbabweans in the diaspora to the issue of the chairman of ZBC. What has happened in public enterprises and in state enterprises has raised the awareness for the people of Zimbabwe. They want a different way forward.
“They do not want to be reminded of the past but because everybody was caught up in the situation sometimes it is difficult to know who can throw the first stone or who can be said to be clean.
“Perhaps in the first instance, when we were all unaware of this difficult background of the national broadcaster we should have started by penning to men and women of God kwete vaya vanoti Gumbura.
“Chaivo chaivo vanhu vaMwari to provide the necessary leadership because let’s face it, the culture of corruption that has crept us especially over the last five or so years of the informal dollarisation of our country has made many, especially some of the young exceptionally talented people, it has kind of schooled them into the temptation of shortcuts in winning contracts by any means necessary and when you have an ethic of that kind you really end up creating problems,” he said.
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