Tinaani Nyabereka

Gweru- Residents and Ratepayers Association (GRRA) last week Thursday engaged office bearers and stakeholders on a budgeting meeting as part of efforts to equip councilors and stakeholders with knowledge on budget formulation processes.
Addressing stakeholders during the engagement in the Midlands capital, Gweru council finance committee chairperson and ward 4 councillor Martin Chivhoko bemoaned poor participation in budget processes saying people were not attending consultations and crucial stages of budget formulation.
“We are worried because residents are not attending important decision making processes in wards. We call for consultations but people don’t attend. Gweru has an estimated population of more than 300 000 residents but at ward level, we are hardly getting 200 people on budget consultations.
“How can we reach important decisions if people are not coming to take part in such processes? At the end certain decisions sail through without people’s input,” Chivhoko said.
He added that as a local authority they were adhering to all budget formulation processes as required by the Urban Councils Act.
“We don’t have a budget committee at the moment as a local authority, but once the finance committee with the help of the finance department are done with drafting our budget, we then go to other committees and then last finish with public consultations.
“We then engage all stakeholders as we segment them so that we reach them all. We follow all the required stages in formulating our budget as a local authority. We are also happy that there have been significant changes on updating of our financial statements. As Gweru was behind, its good news that we are almost there and as I am speaking we are working on finalizing the 2020 statements, our auditors are doing a great job. Soon we will be starting the 2021 statements,” he added.
In his budget cycle presentation, local governance expert Vincent Jachi said the local authorities’ budgets were supposed to speak and move in line with given national objectives.
“So when our budget is done we cannot rush to implement it before it gets an approval from the minister. An important thing to note is our budget must however speak to the national objectives such as National Development Strategy (NDS1).
“As we draft our budget as local authorities, let us also get to understand the need to prioritize the most important things or services which we want our budget to cater for. A good budget always provides for good service delivery,” said Jachi.
GRRA director Conerlia Selipiwe highlighted that it was crucial to have a clearly spelt out criteria in crafting budgets.
“It is always important for us to understand the criteria being used by our council in drafting its budget. We also need to know the criteria being used to have it approved or disapproved. As residents, we feel that area is also important for us to know,” he added.
Meanwhile Gweru council is looking forward to working on a supplementary budget soon as inflation has since affected the performance of the 2022’s ZW $ 4.1 billion budget which was recently approved by government.
The development was confirmed by Gweru council finance committee chairperson councillor Martin Chivhoko last week.

Melinda Kusemachibi

Bikita West legislator Elias Musakwa has promised to take the issue of the vehicle purchase scandal that rocked Bikita Rural District Council (RDC) earlier this year to parliament for debate in pursuit of sanity in public accounts.
Contrary to reports that Musakwa chaired a meeting in Bikita to deliberate on the matter, the legislator said the gathering he was at on June 2 focused on 2021 budget feedback but that is when residents raised their issues.
“I did not see it. I only read about it in newspapers but if it true, what council did is unacceptable. The meeting we held was about the feedback of 2021 Budget not to discuss about the ‘corrupt acts’ of Bikita RDC. However residents brought in the issue and we urged them to engage their councillors, council Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to discuss the issue. As for me I am bound by the statutory laws of the parliament,” said Musakwa.
He went on to say that he will debate it in parliament and engage with the Ministry of Local Government Public Works and National Housing.
“Since the RDC is under the Ministry of Local Government, l will engage with the ministry over the issue. As part of my roles as an MP, I will also try to debate it in parliament and come up with a possible solution over the issue so as to stop corruption which is allegedly being said to be taking place at Bikita RDC,” added Musakwa.
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Accounts chairperson Dexter Nduna said that if the residents wrote a petition to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) definitely they will get a positive outcome.
“If the residents wrote to PAC, yes they will definitely come but if they wrote generally they will not come,” said Nduna.
Bikita RDC has off late been rocked by several allegations culminating to public accounts abuse after purchasing six top-of-the-range Toyota GD6 vehicles for Heads of Departments (HODs) and privatizing them.
Bikita Business Association together with Bikita Residents and Ratepayers Association wrote a petition to Parliament on June 1 2022 raising an issue of poor service delivery rocking in Bikita because of corruption.

Faith Duri

Masvingo province has a total of 116 Covid-19 cases with 106 of them being active ones while 10 of them are new positive according to statistics recently released.
In an interview with TellZim News Masvingo Covid-19 provincial taskforce spokesperson Rodgers Irimayi acknowledged the recent spike in positive cases in both the province and the country at large.
“There is a rise in Covid-19 cases in the province and as a country at large but it is not an alarming number since quite a number of people are being vaccinated. Our statistics shows that more than 6 million people received their first jab and 4 million received the second dose and 829 558 were injected under the booster shot country wide,” said Irimayi.
He also added that they have taken responsible measures to ensure that the cases keep decreasing.
“All our clinics are now vaccination centres. Also we are have changed our vaccination centres into mobile clinics and our health care people are moving door to door in different districts vaccinating people.
“We are urging people to be vaccinated with all the three dosages henceforth reducing Covid-19 cases in the province,” he said.
He however said no particular place or institution can be singled out as having recorded a huge number of Covid-19 cases.
“I cannot say there is a particular institution or place where the cases are mostly recorded but the cases are recorded in all districts since we record two or three cases per district.
“However, we are advising people to mask up and continue maintaining social distancing,” added Irimayi.
According to latest figures Chiredzi had 3 cases while Masvingo had two, Gutu one and four were recorded in private health institutions.
As at June 07 2022 Zimbabwe had 253 637 confirmed cases including 245 596 recoveries and 5 515 deaths while to date a total of 6 238 158 people have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
Harare had the highest rate of recorded cases with 464 active cases followed by Bulawayo with 450 cases, Mashonaland East has 373 cases, Matabeleland South 331 cases, Midlands 226, Manicaland 194, Mashonaland West 167, Matabeleland North 166, Mashonaland Central 136 and Masvingo with 115 cases.

Faith Duri

Sunrise Sign Language Academy (SSLA) in partnership with Masvingo City Council will be offering sign language training next week from June 13 to 17 2022 at Civic Center in a bid to assist the visually and speech impaired to communicate better.
In an interview with TellZim news council Gender Focal person Stabile Matava said they have realized a communication gap between their employees and people who they serve.
“We noticed that we have visually and speech impaired patients who come for our services at local clinics, so they are forced to be in a consultation room with their aides of which at times they do not want their aides to know about their health status due to privacy issues. We want to avoid issues of delaying treatment to our patients.
“We have noticed is that we have a lot of vendors nowadays who are visually and speech impaired, so there is communication barrier between them and our municipal police so we have employees who have these disabilities too. Thus we want them to be part of us,” said Matava.
Douglas Mapeta founder and chairperson of SSLA said they will be training through their partnership and national engagement as far as reaching out to people with disabilities.
“Masvingo City Council has shown interest in bridging the communication gap so we will be training their staff and the community at large and those that will be coming to learn.
“We will also engage the church during the night about awareness on disabilities so that the deaf community and other people with disabilities are embraced in different churches and spheres of life.
“We also train communities in different areas, as we are official trainers of the Ministry of Health and Child Care and we are in partnership with Reformed Church University and National Aids Council,” said Mapeta.
SSLA is a fully registered and non profitable organization that specializes in sign language training, translation and interpretation, special needs and disability awareness in Zimbabwe and outside Zimbabwe.
It was propounded in 2012 and fully registered with the Ministry of higher and tertiary education.
A google search about SSLA shows that it came as a result of tragedy as tragedy struck the Mapeta family in July 2012.
Mr Mapeta became aware of a special group of children with ailments of all sorts and noted the communication gap between the deaf children and the medical people (nurses and doctors)
A few months later he enrolled for Sign Language studies in Zimbabwe (2012) and Kenya (2017) and also did special needs education and still pursuing it.

Faith Duri

Masvingo City Council is struggling to keep up with service delivery needs due to a depleted fleet, with a total of 17 vehicles currently not operational as they have broken down.
A Public Works and Planning Committee meeting dated May 09 2022’s meeting revealed that the local authority is struggling, especially in the health and engineering departments.
According to the minutes of the meeting on the health department under the section of clinics there are two vehicles that are not operational which include Mazda Ambulance AAE 5721 undergoing panel beating and brake repairs and VW Ambulance ADB 4123 awaiting engine replacement.
Under refuse compactors there are two vehicles that are not functioning namely UD80 Compactor AAE 9043 whose repair is still awaiting delivery of a new engine and A UD80 Compactor AAE 5998 which is undergoing injector pump repairs.
In the engineering department, 13 cars are not operational under the road section which includes UD CPB 12 Tipper AAE 5780 truck not operational and undergoing overheating repairs, UD CPB 12 Tipper AAR 5781 truck undergoing engine overhaul and suspension repairs, UD CPB 12 Tipper AAE 5722 truck is awaiting new starter motor, Changlin Grader is awaiting spares for transmission repairs, Changlin TLB machine is awaiting the hydraulic pump from China, Dynapac Roller the machine is not operational and is awaiting quotations for new hub.
Of the 13 vehicles, four of them are going under maintenance which include Mazda T35 AAE 5777. The truck is not operational awaiting brake components, Nissan NP300 AAE 8882 not operational, Nissan NP300 AAE 7388 the vehicle is not operational, Nissan NP300 AAE 7389 vehicle is not operational and undergoing clutch system repairs at Amtec.
There is also a Mitsubishi L200 ABW 0755 for sewage works which is not operational and is undergoing engine overhaul and under municipal police operations there is a Mitsubishi L200 AAE 5699 which is not functional and is awaiting timing belt.
Lastly under parks, there is a New Holland Tractor AAE 5797 which is not operational awaiting engine overhaul.
These vehicles that are down are reducing the service delivery progress as some of these trucks are used to collect refuse in the city.
Council has been collecting refuse with the trucks they hired from other organizations and sometimes in high density areas they will collect it after weeks leaving heaps of garbage uncollected leading to unauthorized dumping sites in residential areas.
Council has 46 vehicles including the 17 vehicles that are not functioning, with only 28 vehicles being functional.