Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, [email protected]
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) is leveraging knowledge and skills transfer from twinning arrangements with other municipalities in the region and beyond to enhance service delivery and lure potential investments.
The city’s call centre and Kelvin Industries factory shells are part of the success stories emanating from these engagements. The call centre enables residents to call to the local authority when they need assistance prompting swift response.
Bulawayo has twinning partnerships with cities including Ethekwini City in Durban, Polokwane in South Africa and Aberdeen in Scotland. This week, the council added Mozambique’s Quelimane City as the latest partner, which it seeks to enhance co-operation with.
BCC and Quelimane were both recipients of the US$50 000 of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund whose aim is to educate young people of climate change mitigation measures.
During a meeting with Mozambican counterparts at the City Hall Chambers on Tuesday, BCC corporate communications manager, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, said in twinning arrangements the council gains expertise to improve service delivery.
“Through the twinning arrangement we have managed to establish a call centre, which is a platform for responsiveness to residents. We also have a twinning relationship with Aberdeen, which helped us establish some of the factory shells in Kelvin Industrial Area and what we are doing now is resuscitating those relationships with Aberdeen,” she said.
Mrs Mpofu said partnerships unlock skills transfer among experts as well as facilitate exchange programmes for residents.
“What is key is the city to city relationships, the sister to sister relationships are not only based at the municipal level, we have young people going to play soccer in Aberdeen,” she said.
“We have cultural groups performing in Durban and we have had technical groups of city officials where we are able to go for workshops and learning visits. That is key as it capacitates Bulawayo into an international city.”
Mrs Mpofu said the Government’s engagement and re-engagement policy also strengthens the level of co-operation in lower tiers of governance.
“If you look at the national outlook of engagement and re-engagement, as a city we acknowledge that there are so many areas of expertise,” she said.
“There are so many areas of improvement that we need to have, so, these collaborations help improve the way the city is managed and sometimes expose the city to better programming and better development. As a city council, our thrust is to create a conducive environment for investors,” said Mrs Mpofu.
She said the City of Quelimane has a strong cycling culture, which contributes to reducing carbon emissions hence partnering it creates new opportunities in managing the environment and carbon credits.
“As a city we are a smart and green city and are learning from these initiatives on how we can improve our environments in terms of management,” said Mrs Mpofu.
She said the council will be signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Quelimane City Council on commerce, industry and infrastructure development to enhance co-operation between the two cities.
Quelimane Municipality director of projects and strategic studies, Mr Sacur Chipire, said having been awarded a US$50 000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund just like the city of Bulawayo, his council sees opportunities and learning areas in Bulawayo.
“We are part of the youth climate fund project as the two cities we each received US$50 000 to implement a project related to the youth. We chose Bulawayo so that we can work together because the main idea is to work together and bring successful results in the initial phase,” he said. “This will make us have an opportunity to receive an additional US$100 000, which will benefit Bulawayo and Quelimane City,” said Mr Chipire.
He said Zimbabwe has embraced green energy, especially within households where some families have adopted solar as an alternative power source and it is something they want to embrace.
“The energy sector is one of the sectors that we want to work on, in particular the solar energy maximisation opportunities. For instance, when we were coming we could see traffic lights and houses with solar panels installed,” he said.
“We are planning in Quelimane City because our traffic lights are not run with solar energy. So, our idea is to see how we can work together so that we can have similar initiatives in Quelimane City.
“The world is transitioning to this clean energy, we plan to bring positive results to our city by learning and having partnerships with institutions of higher calibre like Bulawayo municipality.”
Mr Chipire also explained his municipality’s 100 day-policy where councillors who are appointed by the city’s executive mayor are awarded a 100 days contract and failure to deliver means one loses their post. He said the policy has seen officials being results-driven. — @nqotshili
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