HARARE – Government’s Transmedia Corporation has been pruned to just one engineer, from a one-time complement of 15, as professionals continue to dump the parastatal with a good number destined for menial but better paying care jobs in the United Kingdom.
This was revealed on Monday by the corporation’s CEO Adonia Mushosho while giving oral evidence before parliament’s information committee chaired by Marondera legislator Caston Matewu.
Mushosho attributed the staff turnover to unattractive perks offered by the public entity.
He attributed failure by the parastatal to retain key staff to sanctions imposed on the country by western countries.
“We are losing technical skills in droves; some of them are going to do care work, engineers going to do care work.
“We had about 10 to 15 engineers at Transmedia; we are left with one. A lot of them are going to do menial work,” he said.
Secretary for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Nick Mangwana told the committee that government funding has either been inadequate or never gets disbursed by the ministry.
“We have the digitalisation project which was started in 2014 and was supposed to be finished a long time ago but because of funding challenges, we have not made much progress.
“Some of our infrastructure is made up of outdated equipment which poses a challenge to radio transmission and television reception and even in the production departments at ZBC.
“But we have year after year submitted a budget we believe was suitable for us to leapfrog the broadcasting sector.
“One of our challenges is the disbursement itself. The money may never come, particularly for capital expenditure,” he said.
