The Sunday Mail
Most local authorities have been getting a lot of flak for poor service delivery at a time when they have also hiked rates. Our reporter Debra Matabvu sat down with Local Government and Public Works Minister July Moyo to discuss some of the challenges faced by local authorities. The discussion also covered devolution and other issues that are under the Minister’s purview.
Q: What measures are being taken by Government to deal with under-performing councils?
A: It is important to note that water, sewage, public lightning and roads are some of council’s major responsibilities. Through the devolution agenda and the Constitution, councils have two powers: that is, the power to make by-laws as enshrined in the Urban Councils Act and the power to collect revenue through property tax.
In addition, they are allowed to do service charges so they can charge at a cost-effective rate. If it is water, they should charge it at a cost-effective rate.
However, what has happened over the years is that because of maladministration, they are not able to know all their taxpayers, property tax and to know that they need to have their valuation rolls.
Secondly, they have not invested because of laxity in collection of funds. Even when they know the tax of the property, they have not been able to collect properly. One of the reasons they have not been able to collect properly is because they have not been analysing the tools they need to be using in order to collect effectively. The ICT you use can assist or break you. In this day and age, your ICT is what can make you collect funds.
The revenue base is there, but it is not being utilised because of lack of investment in technology.
So to overcome this, we are saying all local authorities should have valuation rolls and part of the devolution funds should be used for valuation rolls.
Mutare City are doing very well. I am not saying they do not have their own problems, but they are doing better. Redcliff has also done its valuation rolls and is doing better. Of course, they are not a water authority, they depend on Kwekwe, but if you compare the roads, you see that they are much better. So, as Government, we are saying every local authority should have valuation rolls.
Secondly, local authorities should look at their financial management systems, and to do so, they are assisted by information management systems. So, every local authority should strive to have the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT)’s-induced local authority digital systems (LADS).
Those who have done it are having good results. You can track your financials and even land allocation, which is currently in a mess. This system can also help to monitor your water systems and sewage. Government is now pushing that all local authorities adopt such technology.
Q: Have councils been given a deadline to submit valuation rolls.
A: We have given them one year to finish the valuation rolls. It is not an easy task. If you read the section in the Urban Councils Act, the part that deals with valuation rolls is probably the longest clause in that Act. It has to be done professionally. It needs to have checks and balances.
Q: You recently appointed the Local Government Board, what is the significance of this board and how far has it gone with approving appointments made by local authorities?
A: The process of appointing a town clerk, chamber secretary, head of department and deputy head of department is done by the Local Government Board.
The process starts with the local authority, which advertises, interviews, short lists and recommends a list to the Local Government Board.
Then the Local Government Board interviews and recommends the best from the list.
The employer is the Local Government authority, but in order to have quality control, we have a national board to oversee the process.
The Local Government Board has hit the ground running. Our chairman is a Local Government practitioner in academia. We are required by the Act to get people who are recommended by the association and by trade unions of local authorities. We are also required to get someone from the Public Service Commission, and we did that.
So I understand they are already interviewing those who made the recommendations even before the board was in existence.
Q: How is the Local Government Board handling the situation at Harare City Council, whose town clerk is on suspension, while other officials in the top hierarchy have also been dismissed?
A: Harare is in this situation because they had already got rid of four top managers and they were already thin even in the absence of the Local Government Board. They were already short of staff. The thing we kept questioning is: How come you can get rid of all these people at once? My suspicion is they wanted to get rid of these and get people who are sympathetic to their persuasion. That is not how you run local authorities, and some of the maladministration is a result of that.
Q: What is the progress on investigating land barons?
A: You are aware that the President appointed a land commission led by Justice Uchena. That land commission has repercussions on management of Harare City Council and other local authorities. The President has appointed a committee that is chaired by Vice President Dr Constantino Chiwenga on dysfunctional urban settlements.
Q: Do you feel enough has been done to improve the mass public transport system?
A: The President also created another committee which I chair, which looks at the mess that has been made on the public transport system. We want to correct it. When Government sees something wrong, it has a methodology of how to intervene. The local authorities answer to the committee on a number of issues and how they can be corrected.
Q: You mentioned that there is a “mess” in the mass public transport sector. What is the “mess” that your committee has unearthed?
A: In the old omnibus system that Government used to run, there was order, there were bus stops. Once we introduced these kombis, they stop and pick people anywhere and this is the chaos that I am talking about. When there is competition of that nature and law is not very strict, that is how chaos is created. We are saying we cannot put these kombis out of business. We are saying let us put a franchise system under one roof. The kombi owner fulfils the requirements of safety while giving us their driver who will be commanded by one command centre so that drivers do not end up competing. So at the moment, we have over 500 kombis and if we start to suspect two things, that they are not licensed anywhere and not roadworthy, we now must make sure that they are off the road.
Q: Now that Constitutional Amendment No 2 has been passed, what are the next processes for the implementation of the devolution programme?
A: There is need to understand that devolution is comprehensive. Like all comprehensive things, they have a head and multiple operations.
The head of the devolved structure is the President at Central Government. He is the head because the laws that govern a devolved State come from the Parliament put by the Executive.
The structures at provincial levels are the ones that were missing because they were not properly drafted in the Constitution.
Now that we have corrected it, we can now start to implement the structures that we think do not compromise devolution.
You remember in November 2018, we had already taken our principles to Cabinet, which approved.
Now since the principles were drafted and now they are in compliance with the new amendment, we can process the structures. That is the first part, but the democratic structures work with a number of services that ought to be done and those services are financed by Central Government. Some of them are financed by the local authorities.
What we have not said is how provincial councils raise their own funds to get to Central Government until we put in this new law that we crafted on how they can also raise independent funds. The local authority is dependent on Central Government but depending independently on raising their own funds as property tax or fees, so it’s already working. This amendment makes it work better at law. For the local authority, there is nothing that is amiss right now, but at provincial level there was something that was amiss.
Q: What is the progress on new city and the new Parliament building in Mt Hampden?
A: The new Parliament building is progressing very well but has been affected by Covid-19, which has hit us very badly. We have new dates (for completion of the project) and I am convinced that the new dates will be met even within the Covid-19 period.
In terms of the new city, a lot is taking place. There are several departments that are working on several issues such as the masterplan and other things.
