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NewsDay

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Companies urged to build communities

News
Companies have been urged to build on capacities of communities and not to exploit their weaknesses, as they will be engaging in corporate social responsibility, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni has said. Rukuni was speaking at a two-day Victory business conference held in the capital Monday. “Help people to help themselves and make real progress,” Rukuni said. […]

Companies have been urged to build on capacities of communities and not to exploit their weaknesses, as they will be engaging in corporate social responsibility, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni has said.

Rukuni was speaking at a two-day Victory business conference held in the capital Monday.

“Help people to help themselves and make real progress,” Rukuni said.

He said companies should invest in the poor as opposed to giving them aid that would only last for a short period of time.

Rukuni said if people did not have material and intangible assets they would not have hope for the future therefore it was the role of the government and business to give people hope.

Addressing delegates at the same conference, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jameson Timba, said the role of the government was to provide a good environment and growth.

“There is no point in saying we are doing citizenship empowerment when on the ground the empowerment policy enriches a few. That is confusion and we need to remove the confusion with policy consistency,” Timba said.

However, Tony Hawkins an economist, said companies should not engage in corporate social responsibility before they have realised adequate profit.

Hawkins said companies were building their balance sheet on expensive short-term loans.

“Ironically too many have been forced to de-indigenise at precisely the time when government is trying to force business into the empowerment style of corporate social responsibility,” he said.

He said the government was broke and was looking at the private sector and non-governmental organisations to help it provide services.

Corporate social responsibility involves incurring short-term costs that do not provide an immediate financial benefit to the company, but may instead promote positive social and environmental change.