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Talent Gore
HARARE City Council is embarking on a decentralisation process which will divide council into five regional offices.
The regions will be headed by a regional manager.
The decentralisation of council will give district officers powers to run their districts in a way that will bring developments to their areas.
Addressing a Harare Revenue Generation, Maximisation and Cost Containment Brainstorming Session with district officers, Town Clerk, Hosiah Chisango, urged employees to put their heads together for this programme to succeed.
He said it’s the role of council employees to be proactive and customer responsive if it has to improve revenue collection.
“As district officers in your new enhanced roles as drivers of service delivery and revenue collection at the local level, it is important that you be customer responsive, dedicated and self-driven,” Masango said.
“Self-driven, particularly in ensuring that the residents in your districts pay for services rendered.
“You must be self-driven in ensuring that customer complaints are addressed on time.
“You will all agree that we have reached an all-time low in revenue collection because as a collective, we have not made reasonable efforts to collect what we are owed.”
He encouraged teamwork for this programme to succeed.
“We are one city and the silo mentality, which is counterproductive, continues to affect our operations.
“We have situations where revenue officers and technical teams do not want to collaborate with district officers. That is going to be a thing of the past under this programme.”
Chisango said low collection efficiencies have a significant impact on service delivery by reducing revenue, leading to inefficient resource allocation, inability to meet service demands, inability to invest in infrastructure and increased debt.
Bongani Ndlovu
Mathew Masinge