THE Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture Ministry's 2025 resource allocation is only enough to cover salaries and operations, a Parliamentary committee budget analysis has revealed.
The paltry allocation will cripple the Ministry's programmes according to acting Permanent Secretary Eugenia Chidhakwa.
Although most ministries' bids were cut by huge percentages, the Sport ministry's situation has been exacerbated by the fact that it was formed out of an existing Youth ministry and still needs offices, equipment, and furniture among other things.
Chidhakwa told the Sport Parly committee: "Our initial overall bid request was $2.2 Billion ZiG but we got $888.3 million ZiG, leaving a huge variation of $1.3 million ZiG.
"We were given $888,387,000, giving us a deficit of $1,337,880,840. Within the ministry, we are divided into three major programs. The programmes are policy and administration; sport and recreation, promotion and development and the arts and culture promotion and development," Chidhakwa said.
Further, Chidhakwa told the committee that: "Our parastatals, which are the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC), the Zimbabwe National Boxing and Wrestling Control Board, the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe and the National Galleries of Zimbabwe have been given monies that will only cover their salaries and operations.
"Nothing has been provided to our parastatals or projects and programmes, which then becomes a very big cause for concern because it means in 2025 they will not be able to implement their projects."
She highlighted that the ministry is supposed to monitor projects and evaluate projects, especially the 100-day cycle projects that we are mandated to do.
"We also need to procure furniture, furniture which then covers our principals, our ministers, our deputy ministers as well as our permanent secretary and no amount has been allocated to that.
"The ministry in its establishment has got provincial and district structures and you would recall, Honourable Chair, that we once used to work with the Ministry of Youth and it was then sports, arts and culture.
"We are now a new ministry and then what it entails is that our provincial and district officers don't have places that they are supposed to operate from because we are a new ministry, they also don't have furniture and tools of trade, which to us are the integral part of our structure as a ministry.
"So without the tools of trade and equipment, it becomes very difficult for them to be able to operate. They have major events that they are supposed to be implementing both in the arts and sports and recreation as well as the arts and culture sector.
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"So our budget falls very short of the activities that we are talking about.
"Furthermore, these activities we do with our parastatals. If the ministry falls short of the budget and our parastatals, if I have alluded, have not been given any budget allocation for the same programs and the same projects it means we then have a very tall order in 2025 which we might fail to fulfil our corporate agreements within member countries," Chidhakwa told the committee chaired (acting) by Murewa West MP Farai Jere.
