adminMashudu Netsianda Senior Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council will between Friday and Tuesday next week conduct another series of budget consultative meetings to give feedback on the expectations of residents and other stakeholders in the 2014 budget. The meetings will be conducted in the city’s 29 wards.
A separate stakeholders’ meeting involving residents associations, civil society, media, political parties, informal traders, industry and commerce and transport operators would be held on the last day of the meetings.
An official from the city council’s public relations department said the purpose of the meetings was to give feedback to the residents on expected outcome and expenditure.
“We held first meetings between 11 and 19 October to review on how we performed in this year’s budget. The purpose of the second phase of meetings is to give residents the feedback basing on their views in the previous meetings and as well as explaining to them on the priorities for 2014,” said the official.
There were, however, concerns from residents over the manner in which the local authority formulates its budget.
Both Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) and Bulawayo United Residents Association (Bura), the two organisations representing Bulawayo residents, expressed concern over the manner in which the city council formulated the budget.
They argued that it failed to address their critical needs.
Bura chairman Mr Winos Dube said there was a need for the local authority to come up with a people-oriented budget that is reflective of their expectations.
“Our observation is that if the city council goes around conducting budget consultative meetings with residents and then goes on to exclude their inputs, then that defeats the whole purpose of the process.
“When formulating a budget it should be truly reflective of what people want because if council ignores that it will be as good as wasting the resources,” said Mr Dube.
The programmes and advocacy manager for BPRA, Mr Emmanuel Ndlovu, said the budget consultative process was largely a token.
“As BPRA, we are calling on the Bulawayo City Council to transform the way it puts together its budget as the current method is failing to adequately address the needs of residents.
“It is the association’s contention that when the budget consultative process was conducted in most cases, it is intended to create a false appearance of inclusiveness as the final determination is arrived at by the council technocrats while views of residents are largely discarded,” said Mr Ndlovu.
He said in implementing the budget, the city council only consulted a handful of residents.
“The budget meetings are inadequately publicised and the process is designed in a top-down manner without much room for residents to shape the outcome of the consultations,” said Mr Ndlovu.
He said despite the residents having been given the platform to air their views, there were no means for them to know how the final budget consultations are arrived at.
“BPRA also feels that the once-off budget consultation meetings are inadequate to truly capture the views of residents on the budget.
“Methods such as surveys should be considered and we believe that the budgets should be crafted in line with the realities faced by the residents of Bulawayo,” said Mr Ndlovu.
Residents also urged the city council to approach budget issues with the varying needs of communities across the 29 wards of Bulawayo in mind.
“Such an approach would be pragmatic in light of the fact that the needs of communities across the 29 wards differ. The budget should be moulded in line with the needs of communities and for every community to be allocated grants for projects that need to be completed in that particular community,” Mr Ndlovu said.
BPRA believes the city council’s budget consultations failed to achieve the intended purpose because the views of residents from different realities were lumped together resulting in budgets that do not address the issues on the ground.
“This may explain why to date some areas in Cowdray Park still have no running water while the housing infrastructure in areas such as Sidojiwe Flats, Pelandaba and Iminyela are in a state of disrepair.
“Swimming pools in Barbourfields, Luveve and Mpopoma are not functioning, while elderly residents in areas such as Magwegwe, Makokoba and Mzilikazi are not receiving any social services from the local authority.
“These are everyday issues that can be addressed if the budget process is recalibrated to focus on ward issues and if views of residents from communities are actually considered in the formulation of the budget,” said Mr Ndlovu.
In one of the meetings held at the Small City Hall recently, Bulawayo residents said they wanted council to channel more resources in next year’s budget towards addressing the prevailing water and housing challenges facing the city.
Bulawayo has been facing perennial water shortages for years because the five supply dams built before independence can no longer satisfy the city’s growing population.
This prompted the city council to introduce water shedding in a bid to save the resource.
This year’s city council budget stands at $168 million with its major priority services on water, sewerage, health, housing, roads, public lighting, fire and ambulance and roads.
The local authority is struggling to provide efficient service delivery with concerns over poor roads, accommodation and staff shortages, salary backlog, debts to different service providers amounting to more than $78 million and inadequate refuse collection.
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