The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) yesterday pledged to assist Zimbabwe set up an emergency disaster management centre to assist the country prepare for unpredicted natural calamities.
John Nyashanu in Kuwait City, Kuwait The pledge was made by ITU secretary-general, Houlin Zhao when he met Zimbabwean ICT, Postal and Courier Services deputy minister Win Mlambo on the sidelines of the ongoing Second Global Forum on Emergency Telecommunication taking place in Kuwait City.
In an interview after the meeting, Mlambo said his one-on-one engagement with the ITU boss had been highly fruitful and the stage was now set for stakeholders to start deliberations on how the project would be rolled out.
“This is a real milestone considering that the offer has been made by the top man in ITU himself. The secretary-general was actually shocked that Zimbabwe had not yet received such assistance and bemoaned Africa’s lack of seriousness in accessing assistance from the United Nations agency,” he said.
“This is very regrettable because African countries tend to downplay what we call disasters. For example, in Zimbabwe, we have been ravaged by veld fires, cholera, floods and landslides, and all these constitute disasters, but how proactive are we in terms of preparedness?”
The ICT deputy minister could, however, not say how much it would cost to establish the centre.
He said Zhao had recommended that ITU director for the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), Brahima Sanou, and Zimbabwean-born chief of project support and knowledge management for the union, Cosmas Zavazava, work in conjunction with the ITU local office and the Civil Protection Unit to fine tune the project.
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Some of the natural disasters that have hit Zimbabwe in the recent past include the Tokwe-Mukosi floods, where some 16 000 villagers were, for days, marooned on the basins of the dam in Masvingo two years ago, the cholera outbreak, which claimed over 4 000 lives in 2008 and veld fires.
Last year, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa said 1,7 million hectares of land had been destroyed by veld fires in 2014, a predicament, which constitutes natural disaster.
Mlambo said considering the cordial relations between Zimbabwe and ITU and the extent to which the country had supported the UN agency in its programmes, it would be prudent to have a Zimbabwean representative in the top echelons of the world body.
“Zimbabwe has been a member of ITU since 1981, a year after our independence, and we have stood by it since. We have constantly ratified ITU treaties, while many other nations dithered or left the organisation altogether. It is against this background that we feel one of our experts deserves a very senior position in ITU,” he said.
