By Anna Chibamu
LEGISLATORS have urged the government to put more resources towards the development of innovation hubs.
Touring University Innovation Hubs and industrial sites in Masvingo and Bulawayo last week, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it was impressed by the level of innovation in universities in areas visited so far but highlighted there was a shortage of resources to expand.
The legislators toured the University’s Innovation Hubs and Industrial sites on a fact finding mission in regards with the Report on Utilisation of COVID-19 funds towards production of Personal Protective Equipment and Sanitizers under the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education.
After a tour of the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo, PAC chairperson, Chalton Hwende commended all the Universities that were visited by the Parliamentarians over the week.
“As a committee, we visited the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), Harare Institute of Technology (HIT), Chinhoyi University of Technology in Chinhoyi (CUT), Midlands State University (MSU) in Gweru and Great Zimbabwe University (GZU) in Masvingo and the National University of Science and Technology ( NUST).
“As a committee, we are quite impressed with the work being done in all the Innovation Hubs that we visited. We are on a mission to check whether there was value for money over the money that the government invested during the COVID-19 era.
“As you are aware, when COVID hit us, we were not prepared, so government released money to various institutions of higher learning for the purposes of producing masks and sanitisers and other stuff that were related to the COVID-19 situation that was prevailing at that particular time.”
“After that, the Auditor General is mandated by the Constitution of Zimbabwe to do a value for money audit just to see whether the resources that were deployed were used properly and whether there was value for money.
“So I must confirm that indeed, from what we have seen, there was value for money. For example, here they received about ZWL$3 million and they managed to grow that ZWL$3 million by 47 times.”
He added, “We urge the government to put more resources towards innovation hubs so that we can reduce our import bill as a country, and we will be pointing out those areas in our report when we table the report in Parliament sometime”.