Govt committed to improving citizens’ welfare
THE need to put people first in development is seen in new policies that put citizens first in all that Government does, chief director of the Corporate Governance Unit and Procurement in the Office of President and Cabinet Dr Michael Musanzikwa said yesterday.
Presenting a paper titled “Public Policy Formulation and Implementation” to participants of the National Defence Course at National Defence University Dr Musanzikwa said the Second Republic had added “citizen-centric” validity to its governance and policy to ensure inclusive socio-economic development and transformation.
“The Second Republic has acted on this citizenry call through implementation of His Excellency the President’s mantras, Leaving No-one and No Place Behind, and Zimbabwe, a Friend to all and an Enemy to None,” he said.
“These are in themselves public policies which define and set the guiding principles of how Zimbabwe relates to and addresses its citizens’ issues and those of its fellow nation States.’’ Dr Musanzikwa said public policy formulation and implementation will always be relevant to national development and relations among nations. In the evolving socio-political environment, citizens are ever-anxious to know how public policies that affect them are formulated and how the governance apparatus works vis-à-vis their own interests, and social and material expectations.
It was apparent that public policies would always be relevant to national development and relations among nations, since they offer the most plausible legitimate mechanism by which a Government can ensure a particular outcome or set of outcomes. Without good public policies, he said, it was difficult to fathom how public administration could be executed.
“Public policy formation is a deliberate and not random process, a factor that greatly increases certainty in administering nation States,” said Dr Musanzikwa.
“Conversely, the formulation process should ensure that citizens’ concerns are taken on board through multi-stakeholder consultations and the measures timeously implemented through specification of feasible time frames.
“Policy formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation therefore form the core elements of Government operations.”
Government was forging ahead with the socio-economic transformation of the society through innovation, social engineering, demographic transition and globalization through Education 5.0, which sought to industrialise and modernise Zimbabwe through transformation of the education system from an academic to a production orientation.
In the desire to promote national unity and integration, the Devolution Agenda and Political Actors Dialogue were established to ensure all-inclusive development. On addressing the issues of efficiency, accountability and transparency in public affairs, the Public Entities and Corporate Governance Act and its envisaged amendments, were formulated to address the identified deficiencies of Zimbabwe’s public entities.