Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday honored Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister Anxious Masuka, who emerged as the overall best-performing minister in 2022, after steering Zimbabwe to a record wheat harvest and consolidating national food security.
Mnangagwa at a ceremony also honored the permanent secretary in the ministry, John Bhasera, who emerged as the top-performing permanent secretary for the past year.
The government introduced performance-based contracts last year as a way to foster a high-performance culture among top civil servants to enhance accountability and good governance.
Mnangagwa hailed the agriculture minister for his sterling performance that saw the country achieving wheat self-sufficiency for the first time in 56 years after production soared by 25 percent to 375,000 metric tonnes in 2022.
He said most government ministries achieved set annual performance targets, with clear performance progression shown throughout the year. In addition to a clear work-culture transformation across the public sector, President Mnangagwa said the ceremony is also a reflection of the administration’s determination to deliver quality and timely services to the people.
He said it was crucial for top public servants to achieve high performance and accountability to accelerate the country’s quest to achieve its vision of becoming an upper-middle-income economy by 2030.
