Walk the talk, Your Worship

14 Sep, 2018 - 00:09 0 Views

The ManicaPost

THE City of Mutare is among bed-ridden local authorities in the country that are failing to offer sound service delivery to ratepayers due to a plethora of difficulties.

For more than a decade, the municipality has struggled to collect garbage, repair damaged roads, upgrade sewerage systems and provide adequate water to residents.

Despite the eastern border city receiving uninterrupted, fresh water supplies from the Odzani and Pungwe water works which need no pumping to feed the locations, acute water shortages have become the order of the day in some suburbs especially Dangamvura.

This problem was caused by poor planning and corruption. Last week Councillor Blessing Tandi was elected Mutare mayor. In his maiden speech he unpacked his vision and spelt out the course of action he intends to take in order to make the city work again.

He touched on many issues that are badly affecting operations at the Civic Centre and proffered a litany of remedies he said would turn back the hands of time and turn the city into a gem within the next five years.

Cllr Tandi was spot on. However, to achieve his vision and turn around the fortunes of the city, the city father must set politics aside and engage in civic duties full time.

His Worship must understand that for him to make Mutare tick again there are bad apples at council who are milking the local authority and putting service delivery into disarray. Cllr Tandi must be prepared to distant himself from these malcontents and help council remove crooks among its workforce.

He must also know and understand that some of his fellow councillors cannot be trusted either when it comes to executing their duties truthfully.

Cllr Tandi knows most of his colleagues; their weaknesses and strengths. He must not let corruption creep into the chambers like what was happening with the previous administration which he was also party to.

Just before the harmonised elections, there was fighting between the then mayor Tatenda Nhamarare and some councillors bordering on corruption involving the allocation of stands. The fighting parties accused each other of grabbing council stands unprocedurally. It was a nasty war which ended up in the media.

The new mayor should be prepared to make enemies among his colleagues if he really wants to end corruption because there are no saints at the Civic Centre.

Cllr Tandi must accord the issue of water shortages seriously. Water is a basic human right and its provision must be guaranteed.

It is no secret that council is facing serious cash flow problems, but for the local authority to go for more than 10 years failing to finish a water pipe project, which in 2010 required just above $330 000 and now costs more than $1 million to do the same job is worrisome.

Residents in Dangamvura are boycotting paying council rates because they are receiving no water. If the local authority is serious about increasing its revenue base, services must be provided first before asking for payments.

In the same vein, the sewerage system network is a complete write off in some locations.

Sakubva and Nyamauru rivers are heavily polluted with raw sewage as a result of recurrent bursts. Over the years, the local authority has paid numerous fines to the Zimbabwe National Water Authority running into millions of dollars because of this sewerage pollution.

Had those fines been channelled into repairing the same sewerage pipes we could be talking of something else. The new mayor must whip his engineers into line and repair the mess.

Cllr Tandi must be reminded that no organisation operates optimally with unpaid workers. An unpaid worker is an angry and unpredictable human resource.

For as long as council fails to pay its workers on time, with salary arrears running into months, service delivery will never improve.

It is as clear as day that these workers are doing something else during working hours to put food on the table. Big companies are what they are today because of a motivated workforce. That simple human resources principal must be respected.

It’s one thing to say this and another to do it. My Worship, residents are fed up of empty promises, walk the talk and deliver

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