The report launched on Wednesday at the Media Centre in Harare titled “Knowledge, Attitudes and Perceptions towards ZimAsset Policy in Mashonaland West Province” stated that the majority of people in the province are not aware of the economic blueprint. The majority of the interviewed persons said they viewed it as a Zanu (PF) agenda, not a national policy.
“While the name Zim Asset might have gained popularity on social media, there exists a dearth of information as to what itreally is, how it is going to bring economic turnaround and the roles of the different stakeholders,” read a statement from the research.
According to findings, the lack of information and failure of preceding policies by government to breathe life to the ailing economy had dented the image of the policy and had created lack of expectation, optimism and enthusiasm.
The report, a product of a research carried out by the ZDI to determine citizens’ understanding, attitudes and perceptions towards the country’s economic blueprint, sought to analyze the causes and implications of citizens’ knowledge and perceptions towards the successful execution and attainment of the policy objectives.
However, the research established that only one percent of the surveyed people had read the policy document and 13 percent believed that its objectives were achievable.
The ZDI reported that 472 of the people interviewed said they were totally ignorant of the policy, while 384 of the respondents approached who claimed to know something about the program revealed that they were not significantly knowledgeable.
“The study recorded an alarming number of people who are not aware of the national policy,” revealed the research.
“Only one percent of the interviewees had read the policy document while the rest of the respondents had acquired their information from varied sources such as the national radio (33 percent) and television (26 percent).”
The level of awareness, according to the research is high among males at 50 percent than females at 48 percent and is higher among the urbanites, at 56 percent compared to the rural areas at 46 percent.
The majority of respondents said that despite the potential for the Zim Asset to be practical, 25 percent doubt it would yield positive results or rescue the country from its economic problems.
Only 9 against 41 percent think that the ZimAsset will succeed without external support.
“The generality of the respondents considered the ZimAsset to be too broad a policy with huge investment requirements for it to be workable,” stated the ZDI, adding that the policy required substantial external funding for its success.
Even if it were implementable, a quarter of the respondents are pessimistic that it would make a difference, whilst 27 percent are not decided of what to expect.
The ZDI attributes this to citizens’ past experiences with the government’s previous economic policies, the majority of which were discarded without achieving any meaningful results.
“In fact, 32 percent associate the ZimAsset with previous failed economic policies likening it to the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).”
The ZDI said the respondents revealed that they had “ very low expectations” on the success of the policy for an economic turnaround.
“The majority (68 percent) of the respondents thought that the ordinary citizen will not benefit at all from Zim Asset.
“However, 32 percent were of the opinion that they would benefit and of this number, 14 percent think that males stand a better chance of benefiting than females because history has shown that men have an upper hand in everything and they have a larger constituency in authority compared to women,” read the report.
Respondents who do not believe in ZimAsset’s ability to turnaround the economy suggested dealing with corruption and bad governance, while 59 percent recommended government reform.
Close to 18 percent of the respondents suggested placing Zimbabwe under the Southern African Development community curatorship.
“Curbing corruption, opening more jobs, Increasing agricultural production, restoring international relations and the formation of another government of national unity are some of the options that the Zimbabwean government can take to revive the country’s economy,” read the report.
The ZDI urged government to ensure citizenry engagement in policy making and implementation so as to achieve accountability, transparency and active citizenship.
“Government should actively engage civil society organisations in policy making with the roles of raising civic awareness, community organisations and mobilisation towards consultative, participatory policy making and implementation to close the existing information gap,” recommended the ZDI.
Post published in: News
This is case of money being wasted asking the wrong people an irrelevant question. Even if everyone in Mash West knew everything there is to know about ZimAsset that would not have made any difference to the economic prospects in that province or the rest of the country. None!
ZimAsset is a totally unworkable proposal design to rig economic recovery in that the regime hoped to achieve economic recovery by throwing billions of dollars at the sick economy and thus avoid carrying out the necessary changes to end the underlying problems like corruption.
It was better for the researchers to ask the Zanu PF leadership, who authored of this stupid plan whether they even understood their own work; instead of wasting time asking people powerless to change the plan what the know about it.
We are not getting out of this political and economic mess with this “must work harder” Boxer, the horse in Animal Farm, mentality. We must work hard, yes; but above all we must work smarter. Even the planners themselves realised that ZimAsset would need a massive cash injection to work; Mugabe has since failed to get even 20% of the $27 billion required and yet someone thinks the plan will still deliver all its objectives if the people break their backs making it work!