THE inclusive government has crafted a new programme that will replace the Short Term Economic Recovery Plan (Sterp) and the 100-Day Plan in a bid to stabilise the country’s battered economy.
The new programme dubbed the Government Works Plan has already been approved by the Council of Ministers and is set to be launched and adopted at the beginning of next month. The programme that is expected to run until September 2010 will concentrate on addressing five fundamental areas and draws its input from the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by the three main political parties last year. The five key areas that the all-inclusive government will prioritise in the coming 12 months are the restoration of international relations, economic stabilisation, restoration of the rule of law through amending bad laws, the completion of the constitution-making process and the restoration of social services.  Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, told a stakeholders meeting in Gwanda on Wednesday afternoon that after the revival of the economy, the government through the Government Works Plan was now aiming at stabilising the economy. “After reviving the economy, we are now talking about stabilisation and the Government Works Plan that we are introducing will address issues of food security, social services, water and sanitation, the issue of freedoms, the finality of the land issue through conducting an audit and the restoration of international relations,” Tsvangirai said. He said the main aim of the Government Works Plan was to increase the country’s economic growth. “The focus of the government as from now is to increase the country’s economic growth and that will happen through achieving broad-based targets that include addressing the issue of freedoms by amending bad laws and restoring Zimbabwe back to the family of nations. We need to see food security and agricultural growth happen,” he said. The Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, Gorden Moyo, speaking on the same issue said under the Government Works Plan, the government has come up with a structure to monitor ministries.  “The government has come up with a structure to monitor government ministries and the evaluation structure has to be approved by all government structures before it is adopted,” Moyo said. There have been concerns that some ministries are not performing at all while others have done tremendous work since the all-inclusive government was set up. There have been calls for a monitoring system to be used to evaluate the performance of each ministry and Moyo said the structure they are working on will do that.  Meanwhile Tsvangirai told reporters after the meeting that the outstanding GPA issues will now be dealt with by the Sadc troika and will not be referred to any special summit on Zimbabwe. “The Sadc troika will now be responsible for monitoring the outstanding GPA issues in Zimbabwe and there will be no summit to discuss those issues,” Tsvangirai said. The statement by Tsvangirai clears the air on the outstanding issues after press reports from Kinshasa in the Democratic republic of Congo had indicated that a special summit to discuss outstanding GPA issues will be held in Mozambique in the next three weeks. “The troika has been tasked to deal with the outstanding issues and I am confident that they will deal with the issues,” Tsvangirai said.
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Loughty Dube
