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Bulawayo City Council, like the rest of the country’s local authorities, is failing to meet its financial obligations due to reduced revenue inflows. This is partly because ratepayers are failing to pay their bills and many companies that used to pay for council services have closed while the few remaining ones are also struggling to pay their bills.
Council is as a result owed millions of dollars by both residents and companies. Government departments are also not servicing their bills and are as a result in arrears. The council is as a result failing to pay employees salaries as well as its service providers.
The same scenario is obtaining in other big cities and towns and only recently Gweru City Council employees downed tools to press council management to pay them outstanding salaries. The workers are owed two months salaries. Many councils have been forced to stagger salaries due to reduced cash-flows blamed mainly on the poor performance of the country’s economy.
Some councils like Gweru, desperate to force residents to clear arrears, have resorted to disconnecting water supplies to residents though such action was declared illegal by the High Court.
The approval of a $13,5 million credit facility for the Bulawayo City Council by central government announced by the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Dr Ignatius Chombo, at the weekend is therefore a very welcome development.
According to Dr Chombo the $31,5 million to be provided by a local bank, is meant to improve the local authority’s service delivery for the next 15 years.
Dr Chombo said the move was part of government’s initiative to assist the more than 90 undercapitalised local authorities to meet their obligations of providing quality service to their respective residents. The loan to Bulawayo City Council is meant to improve the city’s water supply and sanitation infrastructure for the next 15 years.
The city has over the years been dogged by water shortages which have forced the council to enforce stringent water rationing measures in a bid to conserve the little water. The challenge of poor water supplies has seen many companies relocating to cities such as Harare and Mutare resulting in thousands of workers losing their jobs.
The economic melt down witnessed during the last decade has aggravated the situation as some of the few remaining companies were forced to close. It is our fervent hope that the improved water supplies would woo back some of the lost investors as well as attract new ones. We want to implore the city council to use the money to be availed for its intended purposes which is to improve service delivery.
Council should resist the temptation of diverting the money to buying vehicles for the so-called project managers at the expense of meeting the costs of implementing the actual projects as what has happened in other cities that got similar loans. When government introduced the multi-currency in 2009, many local authorities pegged their salaries too high hence many of them are failing to pay the salaries.
It is crucial for management and employees of the different councils to be rationale and come up with realistic salaries based on their revenue generations if they are to receive salaries every month.
Many of these councils are spending up to 80 percent of their revenue on salaries at the expense of service delivery but they still fail to pay the salaries regularly. Central government has said salaries for council employees should not exceed 30 percent of revenue but this is not being adhered to because the workers salaries are just too high.
We want at this juncture to urge government to put in place an expenditure monitoring mechanism to ensure councils do not abuse the borrowed funds such as diverting the money to pay salaries or buy vehicles for senior managers.
Online Reporter