BY Miriam Zvomuya
The Harare City Council in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Open University, Faculty of Commerce and Law gave certificates to 77 graduates who have successfully gone under a five-week course. The certification ceremony was held yesterday at the Rainbow Towers Hotel.
The idea of graduate trainee came as a way of supporting the vision of Harare City of achieving a World Class City Status by 2025.It is now three months after the signing of MOU collaborative partnership between ZOU and Harare City Council.
“Your Worship, your vision of regaining the Sunshine City Status by 2025, and the training of these graduate trainees is the first big bold step towards realizing that goal”, said the ZOU Acting Vice Chancellor Professor Alfred Ncube at the graduation ceremony.
“The course covered critical areas of local governance and public administration and thus the participants were accordingly capacitated, transformed and empowered to effectively discharge their duties,” Professor Ncube said..
Each graduate was given a certificate of competence in local government administration offered by ZOU and an induction certificate offered by the City of Harare.
The Deputy Mayor of the City of Harare Councillor Enock Mupamawonde said the revival of the graduate trainee programme is critical in developing a human capital base which will take over leadership positions in council.
“I am confident that from this crop of graduate trainees we will have a future Town Clerk, Directors and Municipal Managers”, said Mr Mupamawonde.
The substantive Town Clerk is a product of the City of Harare graduate trainee programme after almost three years without a CEO .This clearly demonstrates the value of this initiative.
“When the idea of running the three programme, that is graduate Trainees, Trainee Technicians and Apprenticeship in the city of Harare was initially mooted some of us were of the view that it was impossible,” said the City of Harare Acting Human Capital Director Rtd Major Matthew Marara.
The City of Harare has been in the news headlines over the cholera outbreak. As part of the City of Harare the graduates were urged to contribute ideas on how best to run the local authority by not only focusing on the negatives but on drawing lessons from the criticisms, said the Town Clerk Eng. Hosiah Chisango.