Online Reporter
Rutendo Nyeve
THE Government has begun a rigorous data interrogation and validation exercise for the 2023 Minimum Service Delivery Standards (MSDS) across all local authorities in the country, in a fresh push to ensure councils improve service delivery.
President Mnangagwa launched the MSDS in Bulawayo in June last year, which is expected to drive towards the attainment of Vision 2030.
The standards set minimum performance benchmarks that all urban and rural local authorities must meet by 2030, when Zimbabwe aims to attain upper-middle-income economy status.
Key service delivery indicators cover areas such as water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, roads and drainage, public lighting, corporate governance, environmental stewardship, public health, housing and social amenities.
Under the framework, urban local authorities are expected to provide 90 percent water coverage by the end of 2027 and 100 percent by 2030, while rural local authorities should reach 70 percent coverage by 2027 and full coverage by 2030.
By the end of 2026, councils are also expected to provide water for at least 20 hours a day, increasing to 24-hour supply by 2030.
Teams from the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works are currently on the ground in Victoria Falls, conducting physical inspections and verifying data submitted by the municipality as part of the five-day exercise that will stretch across all 92 local authorities across the country.
During the visit, the delegation carried out spot inspections at key service delivery points, including water and sewer treatment plants, reservoir projects and the municipal dump site, before meeting council management to review submitted data.
Chief director in the ministry responsible for local authorities, Mrs Khonzani Ncube, represented by deputy director for information technology, Mrs Thando Machona, said councils must adopt a collaborative approach to service delivery.
“This is not a one-person job. It is a task that demands coordinated teamwork across all your departments to make it seamless. The days of working in silos must now belong to history,” she said.
“We want to build a culture of teamwork, collective responsibility and consolidation of institutional memory.”
Mrs Ncube said physical inspections were necessary because statistics alone cannot accurately reflect the reality on the ground.
“This process will also include random inspections to assess the quality of service delivery on the ground.
“For instance, we will be peeking into your solid waste, wastewater management systems and examining the trafficability of roads, and scrutinising other indicators on public health and environmental stewardship. After all, numbers can be made to sing, but the streets don’t lie,” she said.
The MSDS framework now serves as the official service delivery blueprint for all local authorities and establishes performance benchmarks across eight service delivery categories, raising the bar beyond earlier initiatives such as the Service Level Benchmarking programme.
The exercise traces its roots to the “Call to Action: No Compromise on Service Delivery Blueprint” launched by the President in November 2023, which laid the groundwork for the development of the MSDS with support from the Netherlands-based VEI and contributions from various line ministries and agencies.
Mrs Ncube said going forward, the MSDS will serve not only as a compliance checklist but as a performance measurement tool, with a dashboard already developed to allow local authorities to submit data remotely.
“This digital transformation is not optional, it is a critical tenet of both the Call to Action and the broader Vision 2030 modernisation agenda. As a result, local authorities must invest in ICT infrastructure and skilled personnel to support this transformation,” she said.
Mrs Ncube said all council activities, projects, programmes and expenditures must now align with achieving MSDS performance targets.
“These standards are not mere guidelines; they are the compass by which our performance will be measured, and in the grander scheme, they are critical in aligning local service delivery with national aspirations,” she said.
“They will contribute directly to the achievement of the National Development Strategy and the realisation of our Vision 2030 to become an empowered and prosperous upper-middle-income society.”
The validation exercise seeks to ensure that service delivery improvements are measurable and tangible in communities across the country.
