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TelOne in conjunction with Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) has graduated 15 inmates and 3 officers in the Nursery, Seedling and Orchard Management and Production Course today at Chikurubi Prison, Technomag reports.
The programme is meant to equip inmates and officers with special life skills, and go as far as assisting inmates to re-integrate into society after serving their respective sentences.
Speaking to the graduants at the graduation, Acting TelOne Managing Director Engineer Lawrence Nkala said the synergy with ZPCS is a quest to continue making a positive impact in the community beyond the call of TelOne’s business mandate.
“We are positive that the programme has equipped our graduands with the knowledge and skills that will be useful as the inmates re-integrate into society after serving their respective sentences. It is indeed a plus for us as TelOne as this programme has enabled us to play a meaningful role and impact this usually forgotten prison community,” he said.
The course content included Woodlot Establishment and Management, Fruit Tree Production,Management of Fruit Trees, Budding and Grafting,Bee Keeping, and Financial Management.
Engineer Nkala also added that such programs allow prisons to be self sustainable through earning their own income.
“Under this programme, we have been supporting the consolidation of the nursery project seeing the facility producing about 60,000 seedlings this year. TelOne will withdraw its quota for our own tree planting programmes and we are happy to support ZPCS in the commercialization of the rest of the seedlings,”
“Using our network, points of presence nationally and go to market capacity we can be able to assist to push seedling sales not only to make the project self-sustaining but also to earn some income for the prisons. We are of the conviction that with increased effort from us all, ZPCS could easily make in excess of US$50,000 per annum from tree seedling sales and indeed, we stand ready to support this endeavor,”
TelOne-ZPCS partnership that was birthed in 2016 with a donation of a few hundred tree seedlings for the establishment of an orchard at Chikurubi Farm, and this has now evolved to an establishment of a fully-fledged nursery and training programme.
To date TelOne TelOne has to spent about USD20 000 on the programme.
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