Byo ward retention fund underutilised

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
BULAWAYO City Council’s internal audit has unravelled a number of irregularities within the ward retention fund amid revelations that ever since its inception in 2016, just $5 million has been disbursed.

The fund was first mooted in the 2015 budget outreach programme where council resolved to be funding projects that were decided by the ward under the leadership of their elected councillor. Funding for the projects was to be tied to what each ward contributed to council’s coffers as a means of encouraging residents to pay their bills.

The receipts into the fund are three percent of all cash received from payment of services billed to ward residents.

In the past years the fund has been subject to controversy with top officials — at one point — being accused of stifling development in the city after it emerged that nine wards in the city have not had ward retention funds released to them since 2016.

The internal audit was instituted so as to evaluate whether the fund is being used in compliance with applicable regulations and policies. According to the findings of the audit, the scheme has been flagged as generally underperforming with $5 million having been disbursed against a cumulative total of $19 million.

The local authority among many reasons attributed this to changes in the procurement system, inadequate funding, inadequate co-ordination among departments, induction of councillors on the operations of the fund, incapacitation of some ward committees in identifying suitable projects and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Six wards (5, 12, 16, 17, 25 and 26) have expended above 50 percent of their retention income. Ward 25 exceeded its collected income by $283 000. Seven wards (3, 4, 6, 14, 19, 21 and 23) have experienced between 10 percent and 20 percent of their retention income. Of much concern is ward 11 which has not utilised its retention funds from inception to date. The ward has faced challenges in implementing its requested project hence no expenditure incurred. Its current balance of $417 000 is being eroded by inflation and will not cater much for its intended purpose,” reads part of the findings.

“Further, it was discovered that councillors were subverting the project submission procedures where they were submitting directly to implementing departments instead of through the designated administration office.

“We found that projects are not effectively assigned to project managers. We noted that project managers receive tasks verbally from supervisors. There are no agreed timelines making it difficult to determine when the request was made and the project was expected to be completed.

“We noted delays in carrying out ward projects with project managers attributing the delays to inadequate funding.

Although the initial project budget would have been sufficient, price escalators resulted in failure to complete the projects as planned,” read the audit findings.

In terms of projects that were submitted by councillors, of the 111, 108 were approved and three rejected. Of the approved projects, 40 were complete, reflecting a percentage of 37 percent. 38 percent are in progress, 21 percent have not yet commenced and 4 percent were cancelled due to price escalation.

“The scheme has not fully met its objective mainly due to a number of economic and administrative challenges faced by the city. With proper coordination among departments to effectively manage ward projects, there is a potential for residents to benefit from the scheme and in turn motivate them to pay their bills.

“The city should also showcase those wards that have significantly benefited from the ward retention scheme as a way of encouraging payment of bills in those wards in which development is lagging,” reads the report.

In 2019, council top officials were accused of stifling development in the city after it emerged that nine wards have not received ward retention funds since 2016.

This emerged despite the local authority noting every year in their annual budget presentations that the mandatory development fund was being religiously released to every ward yearly.