Update from Sinazongwe

Details

Created: Wednesday, 10 March 2010 12:38

Report by Josiah Moyo
SINAZONGWE Community Radio

Sinazongwe / Southern Province / Zambia

The report for the ITC and the radio station is from February, 2009 to December 2009.

see also recent news about the situation there under SINAZONGWE.ONLINE in the Discussion Forum;

and Josiah Moyo's report about the Review and Planning Workshop in Binga under the headline Kunzwana & Tonga.Online projects to live on   

Sinazongwe Information Technology Centre ITC

Nine people from the community all males trained, seven were pastors and two were trained by a former student trained from Sinazongwe ICT, two were local community members and were trained by the IT trainer. The pastors took six weeks to complete their course while the other two took four weeks, compared to the period from August, 2007 to January, 2009 which had grade eight class with a total number of 55 pupils, one class has 27 pupils, the other class has 28 pupils, of which 13 pupils and 16 pupils are girls respectively. Grade nine had two classes, with a total number of 53 pupils of which 11 from each class were girls.

What led to this downward trend?

No free time table to fuse in IT lessons
Afternoon time is meant for prep and call curriculum
IT room turned into staffroom.
IT trainer frustrated on the continued work as a volunteer with no renumeration.
Children willing to learn during their free time can do so only on every Friday.
Learning is still a problem in the valley since children are still being pushed to attend school. They are still far behind to know the need of a computer.

Sinazongwe  Community Radio

Simonga – Maliko Budima group had an opportunity to sell their untapped cultural heritage to Europe with the aid of Peter Kuthan (Tonga. Online) The trip was an eye opener to learn how we can sell our traditional culture and be proud of it.

Due to financial constraints no consultations were made with Ministry of Information regarding the radio licence because the laid down procedures were not fullfilled. The funds which we had hoped to attain the needed standards of our studio to be granted the license were not released due to some technical problems faced by Kuzwana Trust. If this was done we were going to be among the three radio stations who have been granted the license namely Radio Macha, radio Namwianga, radio Itezhi-tezhi and radio Chikankata.

From the allowances I raised from Linz09 Parade I paid for a mast which was costing K 2 500 000. A deposit of K 1 000 000 was paid hoping to clear the rest if funds are found and if we don't lose the mast and sold somewhere because of the time frame given has elapsed.

The radio worked with the ministry of health in sensitizing the community and campaign in health matters like Child immunization, Malaria roll up and the deadly cholera disease which has troubled the district despite not having rains. This measure was done in order to instill trust and see the benefit of the radio as a means of disseminating information so that in future they can contribute in building of the radio station.

Several organizations were approached for contracts to air their programs, we are yet to get response from them, and that’s where we hope to get some money to upgrade our studio.

A telephone land line was applied for to Zamtel the service provider who have not yet given us the line may be because of the privatization of the company which is going on.      

Sinazongwe P.O.Box 62
Cell 0978287305