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The continuing decline of Harare City Council, which has already seen the central Government having to declare urban roads a state of disaster so it can legally start fixing them, has now extended to the even more crucial health network with its 15 clinics operating on skeleton staff.
This is besides the exceptionally intermittent garbage collection, the everlasting problems with water supply, the multiple staff problems at the top level and a general lack of direction.
But easily the largest single problem now facing most residents of the city is the decline in the primary health system following the resignation of around 300 health staff in recent months according to the council’s own figures, and this decline at a time when demand for health services is rising with the Covid-19 third wave looming over the city.
Harare used to have little difficulty staffing its health department, offering salaries at least as good as any in the public sector plus all the advantages of big-city life and services.
Generally speaking any vacancy could be filled in minutes from a waiting list of nurses either already living in the city for family reasons or more than happy to move into town.
No longer. The private sector is growing with the Covid-19 demands, so can pick and choose whom it wants from experienced public sector staff.
The Ministry of Health and Child Care has been making some serious progress on fixing up its hospitals, bringing staff levels up to full establishment and offering modest but frequent salary increments along with transport and other perks that at least make conditions tolerable, if not what staff are pressing for.
And even with global travel hammered back there is still a flow of trained Zimbabwean health professionals to greener pastures in some other countries, as Zimbabwe continues to train for emigration.
Instead of Harare having more applications than vacancies at any one time, the council has a growing number of vacancies without applications to fill them.
The reasons for the exodus are easy to find.
The council still owes arrears of salaries to many, salaries and conditions of service have fallen behind Government levels, according to nurses, plus rising costs of transport with the regular doubling of Zupco fares that can now easily absorb a quarter of a health worker’s salary unless they are fortunate to live within a short walk of their work station, something that is rather difficult in the peculiar spread out city plan of the capital city coupled with an acute housing shortage that makes moving with the job near impossible.
The best solution that the council can come up with is to find other people to pay the bills. Some major polyclinics are remaining functional because donors have stepped in with support.
The plan by the central Government to take over local authority nursing salaries as part of the section of the National Development Strategy to upgrade public health services is seen by the council as a life-saving measure.
This financial morass is despite the dramatic increase in consultation fees late last year to US$5 or the local equivalent, now around $430.
That was justified as necessary to provide and maintain what was described as a “first class” public health system in the city.
The problems are not internal to the city health department. It is generally agreed that in some respects the department stands out in municipal service.
For a start its director is the only department head not on remand for corruption related activities, and he has even had the modesty to turn down the offer, made a result of his honesty, of appointment as acting town clerk.
But the director cannot run a “first class” service without the required money and administrative back-up, and there the council has fallen down, badly.
It is much the same with its other services.
Even with most directors now away from work while they wait for the criminal justice system to convict or clear them, there are competent technical staff in post, although administration is ropey.
And more critically the central direction of a functioning city council is for all practical purposes totally missing.
It seems incredible that the richest area of Zimbabwe, and one that holds a high proportion of the top professional, technical and business leadership of Zimbabwe cannot put together a city council that is competent and, what seems to have been another major problem, honest.
Part of the problem is that the opposition refuses to take the city seriously.
While it has obtained majority support in the city for close on two decades, it has regarded the city council as a convenient place to nominate the totally useless, something that the last two mayors who managed to serve full terms were very critical about.
Abusing electoral support to provide an income, from attendance allowances, to unskilled and unemployable friends of party leaders is hardly a way of showing you can run a country.
But perhaps they cannot find anyone else.
We have now reached the stage where most city residents want the central Government to step in and take over more and more of the local Government functions, the central Government under the Second Republic having been fixing its own national systems step by step.
But it is difficult for central Government to take over what are supposed to be self-governing municipalities and it seems absurd that a city with so many resources cannot run itself properly.
Covid-19 has prevented the by-elections that were needed when the opposition meltdown created a bunch of vacancies as councillors were recalled, to which have been added a bunch on suspension once they were placed on remand.
Presumably the continued meltdown of council functions will see residents actually looking at the CVs of council candidates when they get a chance to vote and this provides an opportunity for the competent to put forward their names.
Voters need to be less worried about the nominating party and be far more worried about who the best person is, and if necessary start looking around their wards to find people who have made their mark in other sectors who might be willing to put in the few hours a week a decent councillor is expected to devote to the job.
Online Reporter