Madam Speaker, in 2018 and in response to the need to modernise and industrialise our nation through a correctly designed education system, Government came up with Education 5.0 Policy Framework. The framework entails that education has to have five inter-dependent pillars which are teaching or learning, research, community outreach, innovation and industrialisation. Innovation and industrialisation are the additional two pillars to the traditional three pillars of teaching, research and community outreach which we called Education 3.0. This policy needs a strong and supportive legal instrument that embraces it.
Madam Speaker, the above need made us to look at our principal Act of Manpower Planning and Development Act [Chapter28:02], herein after I will refer to as an Act of 1996 with the aim of strengthening it to adequately support the Education 5.0 or simply the Education for Industrialisation Policy Framework. This amendment is important to achieve this strategic intent. Madam Speaker, nations are directed by their national strategic intentions. The national strategic intention is achieved through a national capability, a national capability is in turn achieved using a deliberate configuration of education or manpower development to achieve industrialisation and modernisation.
Madam Speaker, we are basically saying our education is our means for our economic development. Furthermore , the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment Number 20 of 2013, hereinafter, I will refer to as the Constitution ushered in the promotion of good corporate governance and other progressive principles which helps to improve service delivery in institutions of Higher and Tertiary Education and its parastatals. As such, the Ministry is aligning the Manpower Planning and Development Act to the Constitution.
Madam Speaker and Hon. Members of Parliament, you may also be aware of the problems that were being faced by the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund a few years ago which included abuse of funds. Malpractices had driven the fund to near bankruptcy where staff salaries were now being paid by a commercial bank against the title deed of ZIMDEF properties. It is our view that these are attributed to the non-implementation of the provisions of the Constitution on good governance and we wish to address this.
Our national strategic intent is to modernise and industrialise Zimbabwe by having an aligned skilled and productive manpower that efficiently delivers a capability to produce goods and services using the heritage based philosophy. We assert that our heritage shall determine the principal direction of our manpower planning and development. Nations can only develop on resources that they have by applying knowledge and skills on them.
Madam Speaker, our Manpower Planning design must therefore, ensure that investment in human capital results in the timely and relevant capability to effectively carryout this national strategic intent of becoming a developed and prosperous nation starting with the level of an upper middle income economy by 2030. We once again assert that the level of development of any nation is a reflection of the level of development and skills of its human resources, given two nations with exactly the same amount of natural endowment but different levels of development, the latter can only be explained by the different levels of knowledge and skills of the manpower of the two nations. A nation with higher skills in manpower will develop faster than the one with lower skills although they might have the same natural resources.
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