via ZMC suffers $1,6m budget shortfall – DailyNews Live by Chengetai Zvauya 27 FEBRUARY 2014
The Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) has a budget shortfall of $1,6 million this financial year, Parliament’s Media portfolio committee was told yesterday.
Tafataona Mahaso, the chief executive officer of ZMC, told the parliamentary portfolio committee, chaired by Zanu PF MP William Dewa, at his Rainbow Towers-based offices that the media regulatory body was facing financial difficulties.
“We presented a request to our parent ministry of
$2 million and we were allocated only $400 000 which is not enough,” Mahoso told MPs.
“We wanted to get more funding from Treasury to enable us to carry out our work but that has not been availed to us.
“ZMC is not getting enough funding compared to its predecessor the Media and Information Commission (MIC) which was performing well during the time we were using the Zimbabwean dollar.”
He said the nine ZMC commissioners led by Godfrey Majonga, who is the chairperson, have not received allowances since 2010.
“The situation is dire for ZMC as there are huge arrears in salaries and allowances as the Treasury has not recognised them and have not been paid,” Mahoso said.
Mahoso was reacting to Zanu PF legislator Kindness Paradza who wanted to know why the media regulatory body was not doing any work besides the registration of journalists.
“We are not lying idle, we are doing a lot work related to media, for example, last year we worked with Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in helping them to monitor the media during the elections period,” Mahoso said.
“We have also made visits to media training institutions and educational tours countrywide.”
He said his organisation had registered about 1 200 journalists and issued them with practicing licences either as freelance or full time journalists.
Mahoso said they had registered 97 media houses since their inauguration.
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