Residents bemoan council’s alleged dereliction of duty

Rumbidzai Mhlanga

BULAWAYO-Bulawayo residents have castigated Bulawayo City Council’s alleged delinquency. The residents made their feelings known during a Constituency Indaba on public resources management for effective public service delivery with the aim of strengthening transparency and accountability in public finance management project, hosted by the Zimbabwe Coalition Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) last week.

The workshop which was designed to promote informative dialogue between residents and local duty bearers left citizens with a lot of half answered and unanswered questions as most of the expected duty bearers from the council, parliament and central government did not show up. Only  Member of Parliament for Bulawayo Central, Nicola Watson and Mr Isaac Matare from the city council finance department turned up and tried their best to respond to questions.
Upon realizing that most of the invited guests had not turned up, a disappointed Shepherd Ncube concluded that the no-show was a clear, ominous indication that the city is far from from achieving change given that duty bearers do not have time to hear what residents have to say.

“Councilors’ failure to attend this workshop clearly shows that they are running away from responsibility. We have a lot of burning questions that we had hoped would be answered today and they are not here,” said an unamused Ncube who proceeded to ask a question on the emergency rehabilitation project prioritizing Masotsha Ndlovu Road, to which Hon. Watson tried to respond although she conceded that the absent officials running the project were better placed to answer the question.

“My perspective as a Member of Parliament is that the Provincial Roads Engineer is the person who is in overall charge in conjunction with the council engineers although I’m not 100% sure about that. The Honorable Mayor shared a lot of knowledge on that at a meeting we once had. At some point, I also queried why  Mashotsha Ndlovu has been done even though the road was not that bad yet as  there are other ulterior roads which are in far worse conditions,” she said.

Mr Isaac Matare, a member of the Bulawayo City Council’s finance department who  joined the meeting a bit later also tried to answer Ncube’s question although he too claimed he is not the one manning the project.

“The council is not involved in the emergency road funds. We are working closely with the government on the emergency road funds but we do not manage the funds or choose contractors. We simply indicate the roads that need to be fixed and so we had given them a list of roads that need to be done and this is done by the government working in conjunction with departments responsible for transport for government vehicles CMED in particular.

We are also not pleased with Masiyephambili Road which even after surfacing, the road is still bumpy. It is not perfect as we would have expected and we do raise such issues with them,” he said.
Matare also addressed concerns on dumping sand.

“On the issue of us dumping sand which is meant to surface roads, we had an agreement with residents to the effect  that we give them sand to patch up the roads while we are sourcing for proper equipment. So we are not just dumping but acting as per our agreement with members of the public,” he said.

However, Patience Chiwere appealed with the council to be inclusive and get as much input as possible from residents as opposed to agreeing with a small fraction of residents while the majority are not aware of the sand arrangement.
Sharon Mautsi, a member of  ZIMCODD and a resident made a ‘how far’ inquiry on the stalled Egodini Mall project given that the project was expected to employ 2 million people.

Matare said, “The council is pushing the contractor who is supposed to be doing the Egodini Mall project but I am told that sometime in October the contractor promised to work on the project until it is done but up to now the contractor is still coming up with a string of excuses as to why they still have not resumed operations. I have never gone inside the mall to see any progress so I am in the dark as you are. As the council we at some point considered terminating the project but there are certain contractual obligations that hindered us from doing that. However, we do not see this Egodini Mall saga continuing forever.”

While responding to Nqaba Tshuma who had asked if it was possible for the local authority to raise revenue from its properties and lessen the burden on residents, Mr Matare said the City Council, like companies, gets revenue from the services it  offers.

“Citizens have a debt of about 2.1 billion dollars which has been growing since the year 2013. Imagine  the projects we could run if we had our hands on that money. Council resembles a company. For it to operate, it needs revenue and that  revenue comes from the products we sell or from services we provide, so since you are saying we should stop taking money from the citizens which means we will stop providing them with water as well because we need money to transport water from dams, purchase materials, chemicals  to process it as well as pay workers’ salaries” he said.

Turning to concerns that had been raised about the council’s alleged opaqueness when it comes to the budget, Mr Matare said there is no law that compels the council to inform the public about the budget.

 “The public should note that they cannot find fault with the council for not informing them about the budget. We do these things in line with the law which does not talk of consultation.  People should read the Urban Councils Acts. It does not state that we should consult the people on our budget but the constitution says we should have a people driven budget. We obtain views from the public and we synthesize them to create a budget for the following year. We then come back to show the citizens our figures,” said Mr Matare.

One of the youths present, Dylan Nyathi said despite the city council’s pride in expanding Cowdray Park into a city, it has not done much to realise the dream.

“Indeed Cowdray Park is being changed into a self-contained city. The plans and lay outs are there for all to see. Council has moved an inch and installed water and sewer pipes and yet people are still complaining. It is very simple, people should pay their connection fees and the council will deliver but the problem is people do not want to pay. For people in that area the connection fees were reduced because there is a donor who has already paid for the greater part of their expenses.

We do not get large amounts from the government as we only receive Intergovernmental Fund Transfer (IGFT) which would be specified for certain projects. This year we were supposed to get close to 600 million dollars  but we only received less than 40 million US dollars. With that money, we improved Cowdray Park which is now the largest township in Bulawayo with over 20 000 properties. So there is the old Cowdry Park and the new Hlalani kuhle which lacks infrastructure and council has been allocated money to put up a public school there and we have built about 3 blocks and are hoping to have more blocks by next year,” Matare responded.

ZIMCODD is currently running a campaign  under the theme #Howfar. The campaign seeks to raise the public’s awareness on the lack of transparency and accountability by the Zimbabwean central and local tiers of government on matters of public resource management. It also promotes the right to information of citizens through its catch phrase, “you deserve to know.”