The new Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Dr Evelyn Ndlovu, replaced Ambassador Cain Mathema because the latter is unwell, President Mnangagwa has said.
Minister Ndlovu is the former Minister of State in Vice
President Chiwenga’s Office and is proportional representation legislator for
Matabeleland South Province.
Minister Mathema is now Minister Without Portfolio in the
Office of the President and Cabinet.
President Mnangagwa said Minister Ndlovu will have to
superintend the establishment of more than 3 000 schools across the country, a
figure that Minister Mathema had identified as an optimum number required for
pupils not to walk more than six kilometres to the next school.
The President made the clarification yesterday while
addressing villagers in Mutoko where he was commissioning a food and vegetable
processing plant at Tabudirira Vocational Training Centre in Mutoko,
Mashonaland East province.
He was chronicling several Government projects that the
Second Republic has embarked upon to improve the livelihoods of people in line
with Vision 2030 of a prosperous upper middle income economy, anchored on the
National Development Strategy1.
“On schools, it is unfortunate that our Minister of Primary
and Secondary Education, Cain Mathema is not feeling well,” said President
Mnangagwa.
“We have since replaced him with Dr Ndlovu. But Minister
Mathema had done an exercise that seeks to establish how many more schools are
required so that pupils do not walk for more than five to six kilometres.
“He did a research, which indicated that over 3 200 schools
are required, so there is that programme.
“So Minister Ndlovu will have to implement that programme
and if we complete it, we would now know that children in Zimbabwe no longer
travel more than six kilometres.”
President Mnangagwa said there was need to modernise the
education system so that it produces goods and services.
He said the education system should not produce university
graduates who roam from one office to another with their curriculum vitae
looking for a job without the technical knowhow to produce tangible products.
The Second Republic, said President Mnangagwa, was ready to
support through funding graduates with a viable project. “We want an education
system that produces products, that produces goods and services,” he said.
Already, a number of tertiary institutions, even primary
and secondary schools, have demonstrated that they can produce tangible goods
since the outbreak of Covid-19 after they produced various personal protective
equipment such as face masks and hand sanitisers.
Dr Ndlovu has served as a senior civil servant before she
was appointed Minister of State in Vice President Chiwenga’s office before her
latest appointment.
Cde Mathema has been a senior Government official since
1997 when he was appointed Deputy Minister of Rural Resources and Water
Development. He was later appointed Ambassador to Zambia and Governor for
Bulawayo in February 2004, a post he held until September 2013 when he was
appointed Minister of State for Provincial Affairs responsible for Matabeleland
North, a post he held until October 2017. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment