dyton mupawaenda
BY custom, law and even the present Government devolution policies, a lot of the nitty-gritty of local administration is done by local authorities in urban and rural areas.
The idea is that people can work out what sort of services they need or want, can understand the budgets with rates based largely on a property tax, and can combine with their neighbours to elect the sort of councillors they want to run the local affairs the way they want them run.
This also frees the national Government to concentrate on national services and national policies, rather than working out how many dogs you are allowed to have or whether your garbage is being collected regularly.
The sheer bulk of detailed work, and the need for variations in services between areas, would overwhelm a single administration hence another reason for having it split up between, in Zimbabwe, 92 local authorities.
This does not mean the national Government should be a bystander.
While granting local authorities the power and independence to make decisions, it also has to ensure that these authorities are providing the core services required, are free of corruption and are properly run.
Hence the oversight by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works and the need for councils to submit their accounts to the Auditor General.
We have seen in recent years such serious problems that the national Government has had to intervene, giving itself the legal authority to do so by having a state of disaster declared so it can move in and take appropriate action.
But this ad hoc arrangement to cope with a council that is not fulfilling its minimum functions, while necessary, should not be the norm.
Two years ago, President Mnangagwa stepped up the pace wanting local authorities to modernise to meet the goals of Vison 2030, Zimbabwe becoming an upper middle income country and economy.
The vision obviously requires every council to be providing the sort of services that a similar city, town or rural area would have in an upper middle income country.
While being careful to respect their local independence the President made it clear that while the country was moving forward and developing, and explaining how it was moving forward, the councils needed to working in step with this general improvement.
Fairly obviously, while levels of services do vary across the country, some councils are providing services that would disgrace a lower income country and which have deteriorated sharply over the last couple of decades rather than showing the sort of continual improvement one would expect.
So now the Cabinet has approved a set of minimum standards for local authorities that will guide them towards improving service delivery in tandem with the national development.
These standards define the minimum levels of services that local authorities should provide, and the nature of the services residents should expect in terms of quantity, quality, time and cost.
The standards also start setting national standards as well, so that there are not huge gaps between what one council offers in comparison with its neighbours.
Total uniformity might well be a mistake, but there are a lot of services that should not vary dramatically between areas.
For example people should expect to be able to have a water supply, have sewage disposed of, have waste collected and have a basic road network that is kept in repair.
On the other side the costs, the rates and fees charged, should not vary much between areas.
Even the urban-rural divide can at least take into account on the rates the fact that most rural families need their own private water supply and septic tanks, rather than have these as council services, but on the other hand almost certainly need more money spent on roads.
There are many services, such as proper area planning, licensing and others, where there should be no differences in quality of services.
When we are looking at standards we need to think what were the earliest local authorities.
The first small towns had sanitary boards that had to make sure public wells were protected, sewage and garbage were properly disposed of, food sales were safe, storm water was drained and the basic first roads were at least maintained.
Fairly soon public health was added, to make sure that infectious diseases did not rip through the community. As most of these diseases were caused by contaminated water and food or uncollected sewage or waste, this fitted in with the other work of the boards.
In rural areas the first authorities were road councils, to make and maintain the roads and be able to control in their public health functions things like the movement of cattle.
Some of these primitive councils at the beginning of the last century were doing a better job over their limited functions with primitive technology than some modern councils with access to modern technology.
So the need for minimum standards is still right there on top of the list. The first councils were given such standards when they were set up, so there can be no disagreement over the need to make sure these standards are updated and made compulsory.
The problem will come with enforcement, but when everyone knows what is being enforced councils that cannot meet the minimum will be highlighted, and will then have to face growing wrath from their own residents.
Hopefully all councils will actually see the advantage of having their service levels measured and set against a rational national standard, and will start competing to exceed these standards, which after all are only the minimum required, rather than what most people might actually like to see.
Online Reporter