Mtambara calls for qiuck formation of ZMC

Acting Prime minister Professor Mtambara who was addressing a journalists on Wednesday in Harare on the Zimbabwe rebranding workshop his office is spearheading from the 25th to the 26 of June said MIC should quickly disappear and ZMC should replace it in the within the next two months.

Lets repeal all the restrictive media laws that contributed to this negative persepection we are having for the past decade and create a conducive media environment if we are to succeed in this image re-branding move we have embarked on. I am surprised that we want foreigners to believe in us when we are failing to believe in ourselves. How many people in Zimbabwe read the Herald and view ZBC TV?, and because of that we as the government are working on the issue of the media as a s[special priority to be addressed within the next two months through the formation of Zimbabwe Media Commission which will register international media so that they come and report from within. Because there is a danger of refusing them licenses as they will report on hear say information which we are calling negative reporting, so its high time we as the government should open up the media for foreign media to come and get the correct Zimbabwean story so that if we feel they have missed the facts we can be in a position to hold them accountable, because as it stands they will continue beaming from outside the country where we do not have control over their actions. said Professor Mtambara.

The Acting PM also warned politicians from using hate language saying this derails the coalition governments efforts of re-engaging with the international community.

Politicians should know that what every word that comes out of their mouths either markets or destroys the country and its important that they should think and weigh first their words before they shout, added Professor Mtambara

Tourism Tourism players Karikoga Kaseke and Emmanuel Fundira said its high time the media industry should be opened so that international tourists get the Zimbabwean story from their media organisations in Zimbabwe.

Us in the tourism sector have been badly affected by the countrys restrictive media laws which have bared international media from operating in the country. The thing is not what you tell the international world from a Zimbabwean perspective but what they see and hear from their international media organisations which in our case is the Zimbabwean story being told by a foreign journalists who would have heard it through the grape vine because he is not allowed to operate from Zimbabwe. So we are saying let the foreign media get licenses and we assure you that all what we are calling negative reports about us will come to an end. Let do away with our negative approach to the foreign media and find out what will happen to our country. We must know also that our local media is restricted to this country only and yet we want to lure foreign tourists and investors how do we think we can achieve this if we continue restricting media from those countries we want tourists from? asked the two Tourism gurus.

The Tourism Re-branding Zimbabwes image is the second biggest tourism workshop to be conducted in the country after the formation of the coalition government and is a brain child of Deputy Prime minister Arthur Mtambara.The workshop according to Professor Mtambara draws people from all sectors of the economy with the aim of trying to improve the image of Zimbabwe which has suffered immensely due to bad governance by the Robert Mugabe led government over the last decade.

Zimbabwe has been described as an unsafe destination due to reports of no respect of human rights and lawlessness in by the Zanu pf led government over the last ten years especially when the Movement for Democratic Change came in place in the early 2000 challenging the old government of dictators.