Buhera South legislator, Joseph “Cde Chinoz” Chinotimba and television personality Rebecca “Mai Chisamba” Chisamba, Zimbabwe’s Ambassadors of Happiness who returned from the World Government Summit on Happiness say Zimbabwe lacks true happiness due to the poor performance in the economy and non-conducive working environments for employees.
Speaking on arrival from the three day summit recently, Mai Chisamba said until the country’s service delivery system has been normalized, Zimbabweans will remain unhappy and will always leg behind in economic growth.
“We have a lot to do before we can talk about happiness. It’s not merely about cracking jokes and laughing.
“Being happy boils down to the work environment, are you being paid well? It also comes down to governance, is it being done accordingly, is service delivery on time, all those things are what constitute happiness but sadly, we are nowhere near being to that level.
“If we do not pace up, we risk being left alone in these old systems and that means we are likely to be stuck in our unhappiness mode,” said Mai Chisamba.
The TV personality said extra social activities are lacking in Zimbabwe as people spend time trying to look for survival means rather than catering for their personal being, which translates to a healthy mind.
Her sentiments were echoed by Cde Chinoz who said Zimbabwe is not yet there with the best.
“We cannot sit in a country and claim to be happy when there is a vendor a few meters from the other.We have the police that violates human rights by beating people. That alone means we are nowhere near being a happy country.
“We are behind by almost 200 years, we are just engulfed in unnecessary things which are stealing our happiness away. Our children are being deprived of their happiness in schools.
“As a result, if we want to be a happy nation, we need devise a strategy that will look at how best we can motivate our people. We need to govern our country the right way,” Chinotimba.
He urged the media to report positively on the country in order to attract investors and in turn grow the economy.
“We need a change of mindset in our media. This partisan reporting does not help at all. If you go to Dubai, there is not a single newspaper that writes on the bad side of the country, they are busy writing on the positives. If you look at our parliament too, we spend a lot of time arguing on petty stuff rather than focus on developmental arguments, those little things are what makes a nation happy but as Zimbabwe, we are still far away and it makes for a sad reading,” he said.
Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Petronella Kagonye chipped in, calling on employers to create a happy environment for their workers as this in turn boost performance which also translates to better results and a happy society.
“A happy worker is one who is motivated and prepared to go an extra mile. Once an employee is happy, he/she is motivated then we are sure to boost productivity,” said Kagonye.
