Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Bhebhe
THE Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) is implementing a restructuring exercise that embraces entrepreneurial skills as a strategy to enhance its operational capacity as it strives to be a leading correctional services provider in the region and beyond.
To facilitate the transition, senior officers underwent a week-long entrepreneurial workshop in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) in Bulawayo.
In his closing remarks on Friday, Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu told the officers that significant progress has been made in the transformative drive which includes the establishment of an Infrastructure Development and Business Development portfolio which is heavily skewed towards creativity and innovativeness that feed into a commercial hub to promote self-sustenance.
This, he said, encompasses a broad range of transactions, setting up significant business acquisitions, generating decision trees on capitalisation models, optimal utilisation of resources that include human capital as one of the key factors of production, and an analysis of an investment appraisal within the ZPCS.
“In real terms, entrepreneurial leaders are the catalysts for the next wave of game-changing ideas in the business domain, a dimension the ZPCS has chosen for its members,” he said.
“Whilst we appreciate such human capital development undertakings, may I say that the ZPCS is implementing a restructuring exercise as a strategy to enhance its operational capacity to necessitate fulfilment of the vision of ‘becoming a leading correctional services provider in the region and beyond,”.
The prison service has several business ventures which include Anju Prison Farm whose core business is to empower inmates with life skills that they can use upon release from prison.
The farm is one of the 23 ZPCS farms producing food for inmates at the different prisons across the country.
The 203-hectare farm with arable land of 130 hectares, is being utilised for the production of a wide range of horticultural produce, cereals and edible oil seeds.
Commissioner-General Chihobvu said through the workshop, senior officers have been enriched and reconfigured to proffer insights through the identification of opportunities and marshal the limited resources towards improved service delivery relative to the ZPCS’s Business Production and Development Section.
He said policies, statutory instruments and governing laws that regulate ZPCS operations should not be a stumbling block to national development but a guide.
“With the rapid changes brought about in this conventional world pertinent to correctional management, we are compelled to accommodate necessary adjustments to such statutes so that we cope accordingly.
“In this regard, let me assure you that every initiative towards capacitating the ZPCS entrepreneurially shall receive resounding support. Get it from me, such proportionate adjustments shall be upheld and no one is going to be penalised for contributing towards the economic grid”.
He thanked ZOU for equipping the senior officers with invaluable life skills necessary to spearhead an entrepreneurial revolution required to drive economic growth and social development in Zimbabwe.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor of ZOU, Professor Paul Gundani pledged further cooperation with ZPSC saying the training has transformed senior officers into corporate entrepreneurs who can develop and transform and use innovative ways of producing goods and services within the organisation.
“Vision 2030 requires entrepreneurial leaders who do not only understand the country’s development goals but can work with their team to make the vision a reality.
“The training is the beginning of ZOU’s concerted efforts to work together with ZPCS to build capacity not only in entrepreneurship and business development and management but in other areas of mutual benefits such as sign language, counselling, staff exchange, collaborative research and quality assurance of ZPCS institute’s curriculum and educational processes,”.
In a speech read on his behalf by acting Director for Policy and Legal Research, Mrs Tapiwa Chiwenga, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said it was pleasing to note that the entrepreneurial concept, a backbone of the country’s economy, has been embraced by the prison service at a time when the economic environment was going through what he called turbulent times.
“The Government of Zimbabwe has taken measures to promote and cultivate an entrepreneurial culture amongst its citizens. An entrepreneurial culture is a foundation to any thriving economy and society,”
Minister Ziyambi said the prison service now has officers who are competent and knowledgeable in areas of opportunity recognition, risk management, resource leveraging and business planning whose attributes are critical in achieving sustainable growth in ZPSC and the country at large. – @nqobilebhebhe
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