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Youth ministry official denies recieving Zimdef donation

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YOUTH ministry secretary, George Magosvongwe yesterday professed ignorance over the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund’s (Zimdef) alleged donation of 100 000 litres of fuel to the Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC).

YOUTH ministry secretary, George Magosvongwe yesterday professed ignorance over the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund’s (Zimdef) alleged donation of 100 000 litres of fuel to the Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC).

BY VENERANDA LANGA

Magosvongwe had appeared before the Justice Wadyajena-led Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth and Indigenisation to speak on the 2017 National Budget proposals by the ministry.

The committee was not impressed that Magosvongwe had appeared before them instead of the ZYC, but they allowed him to speak.

“As accounting officer of the ministry, are you aware of donations that ZYC got from other parent ministries?” Wadyajena asked.

Magosvongwe said ZYC was supposed to account for its resources.

“During my tenure as ministry secretary, I am not aware of any donation that came from Zimdef,” he said.

There are reports that the ZYC was a beneficiary of 100 000 litres donated to it by Zimdef allegedly at the instruction of Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo and his deputy, Godfrey Gandawa.

Moyo and Gandawa are currently facing investigation over allegations they defrauded Zimdef of over $450 000.

ZYC executive director, Livingstone Dzikira recently acknowledged the donation, saying the fuel had been sourced on behalf of the Zanu PF youth league for its million-man march.

Makoni West MP, Kudzai Chipanga (Zanu PF)asked Magosvongwe if his ministry was considering re-introducing the National Youth Service (NYS).

“To us, it is not an optional programme, but has been impeded by a lack of resources to implement it. Recently, we had graduation of 300 national service youths at Dadaya and so the programme is running. We will not reintroduce the NYS, but we will escalate it, and that is why I said I need $10 million on our budget,” he said.

Magosvongwe said there was need to modernise and retool the existing 42 national youth centres, but they faced challenges of inadequate water and funding.

“We need to create additional vocational training centres and we are looking at 300 000 O level graduates to be trained, so we need satellite vocational training centres at each province,” he said.