Africa-Press – Lesotho. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has procured Information Communication and Technology (ICT) equipment for different government ministries.
These are; the Ministry of Small Business Development, Cooperatives and Marketing, Foreign Affairs and International Relations, Development Planning, Gender, Youth,
Sports and Recreation as well as the Bureau of Statistics. The handover was a way of support to the national recovery agenda of the United Nations (UN)
Covid-19 response strategy where UNDP was supporting the government of Lesotho to develop the capacity to recover from the Covid-19 as well as beyond recovery
towards agenda 2030. The equipment composed of 49 laptops and docking stations. In receiving the equipment, Principal Secretory (PS) of the Ministry of
Development Planning, Mr Sello Tšukulu said the government is in need of such equipment and indicated that UNDP has played a great role and conveyed gratitude on behalf of all the ministries to UNDP for the remarkable gifts.
“I believe even our stuff in different ministries will indeed be very effective in
the discharging our functions from now. A number of excuses were made in the past that we are unable to participate in meetings visually because of lack of
equipment and this time I believe that there will be no excuses,” he noted. Speaking at the ceremony the UNDP Resident Representative, Betty Wabunoha stated that UNDP
was happy to support the Government of Lesotho as a development partner in the country. She added that they are the lead development agency of the UN for
socio-economic response and recovery from COVID-19, and this support is expected help them manage the complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic She
indicated that they received request from the different government ministries to help in the area of communications to enable business continuity and to make it
possible to function, despite the challenges and restrictions associate with COVID-19. “UNDP has led in this area working with the various partners to support the government in this area and to ensure the
government can continue to deliver on its critical agenda of development,” she noted. She explained that from different requests that were received last year, UNDP
through their co-resources was able to procure the requested equipment. She continued that it was unfortunate that the handing over of the equipment could not
be done earlier. “As you all know because of Covid-19 there has been a lot of delay in logistics globally, these equipment did not come too long ago. Also at
the beginning of the year we experienced a lockdown then due to various activity that are on-going in the country we had to delay the handover. We were
only able to formally make this presentation to our partners,” explained Wabunoha. She said they believe and trust that the ministries will be able to continuously
deliver in the areas that they have committed to and said UNDP will stand to reaffirm their commitment to support in the areas where possible. She conveyed her gratitude to the partnership and collaboration of the Government
of Lesotho and partners. UNDP and partners signed handing over documentation to confirm delivery and receipt of the equipment. “We trust that the equipment will be used for the purpose that is set out to be used for and will
be of benefit in the areas of work. ,” concluded Wabunoha. The event was closed with a tree planting ceremony, as part of the ongoing campaign and advocacy for environmental sustainability and human development, as highlighted in the recently launched human development report themed Human Development and the Anthropocene (HDR2020)
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