The Zimbabwe International Trade Company has assured its stakeholders that it will pull all the stops to ensure that participants to this year’s ZITF, which is pencilled to be held at the end of April, will be safe from Covid-19.
Speaking in a video published by the company on its Twitter microblogging handle this week, ZITF Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Nicholas Ndebele gave the assurance that the organisers of the ZITF would provide a bio-secure environment for the trade fair’s stakeholders during the event.
“Last year when we held the ZITF, we went an extra mile in assuring the participants that we would provide a bio-secure environment. We then came up with what we termed risk management guidelines that guided our operations, our preparations in line with Covid-19,” Dr. Ndebele said.
Dr. Ndebele reflected on the Covid-19 safety measures that his company put in place during last year’s edition of the event and assured that his company would work with local and national health authorities to deliver another safe event.
“What we then realised during the show was that the system that we put in place and stress-tested during that show was quite robust. We never recorded a single case of Covid-19. So the assurance that I can give the nation, the region and internationally is that we will always go out of our way to ensure that there is that bio-secure environment. Stakeholder safety is…topmost in our concerns and we continue to work with health authorities, the Ministry of Health in particular as well as the Bulawayo City Council’s health department to help us (and) guide us to ensure that our systems are solid enough to suppress any risk that can be related to Covid-19,” said Dr. Ndebele.
The company also reiterated Dr. Ndebele’s message in a tweet made on the same date.
“As we ramp up preps for ZITF2022, the wellbeing of all show participants remains of utmost priority. We are working with health authorities to format the show in a manner that complies with health and safety regulations and minimises exposure risk to COVID19.”
This year’s edition of the ZITF is set to be held from 26 to 30 April 2022, under theme: “Rethink, reimagine, reinvent value chains for economic development.”