After having managed to successfully conduct NACS Outreaches, were miners implored ZACC to use a bottom up approach in implementing the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) 2020-2024, to ensure that miners identify with opportunities in the strategy at a local level, and encourage their active participation in combatting corrupt practices and addressing grey areas in the mining sector, which have made them to be vulnerable and become a threat to sustainable development in mineral rich communities in the province.
Community Youth Development Trust, embarked on a sensitization trip, in West Nicholson, Collen Bawn, Mopane, Irisvale and Mawabeni, to raise awareness on the NACS, and ensure citizen empowerment on their rights and responsibilities relevant to fight against corruption. As such the sensitization trip, comprised of ZACC Research and Knowledge Management Team and Mat South ZRP Districts and Province Public Relations Team, who engaged with the miners in their communities.
What was imperative to note, in the sensitization trip, was the appreciation by the miners in the communities for ZACC and ZRP to come down to their door steps, engage with them and promote inclusivity and consultative debate spaces on anti-corruption efforts from the downstream, so as to ensure a bottom-up decision-making approach prevails. This gave an opportunity for the miners to raise their concerns and cases which were affecting them in their areas. One of the key concerns that came out was the need to establish police base in their areas so as to easily address criminality and corrupt cases that were prevalent in their areas. This became a concern for ZACC and ZRP who shared to the communities, that there was need to engage the Ministry of Finance to ensure that resources were channeled towards establishing the Police Bases.
It was also noted, that the NACS was still a document that people, were still yet to fully understand and identify opportunities that comes with it towards combatting corruption in the mining communities of Matabeleland South. As such one of the recommendations that came out from the sensitization trip was the need to continuously, to raise awareness and also target mining communities, which were being affected by information blackout, to ensure public demand for transparency and accountability and rejection of corruption in public institutions and private sector, to facilitate strong efforts around combating corruption in the mining sector.
In all areas, there shall were stop overs were ZACC and ZRP unpacked to the miners the purpose of the trip and rewarded those who actively participated, during Question and Answer with branded sunhats and masks. The message that was mainstreamed throughout the sensitization was, Refuse, Report, Reject Corruption to promote a corrupt free society. Awareness on COVID-19 was also mainstreamed to ensure that miners were also cognizant of the do no harm approach in their operations and ensure safety of their mining communities. The ZRP Public Relations Team also mainstreamed issues of gender based violence, as they were many cases that were being recorded in those mining communities.
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