Govt finalising councils

Municipal Reporter
Government is still finalising arrangements for the installation of the recently elected councillors across the country, Secretary for Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Mr Killian Mpingo has said. “The ministry is putting in place practical arrangements to commence council business,” he said in an interview. “We will communicate once we are clear.”

Councillors for the country’s 91 local authorities were elected during the harmonised elections held on Wednesday.
This year’s elections were interesting in that some of the urban councils that were previously led by the MDC-T were won by Zanu-PF, while in other urban councils the MDC-T influence was greatly reduced.

ZEC was by yesterday still to give a full compilation of councils’ results that indicate the number of wards received by each political party in a given local authority.
“We are still compiling the list of councillors”, said a ZEC official.

Councils have been under the management of caretaker committees from June 29 after the expiry of their tenure.
The committees were made up of town clerks and provincial administrators for Harare and Bulawayo, while for other local authorities they comprised district administrators, town clerks, town secretaries and chief executive officers.

The committees ran the councils’ affairs and would disband at the inauguration of elected councillors.