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.
