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Herald Reporter
Harare Metropolitan Province is calling for public representations on the review of ward boundaries for consideration in the forthcoming delimitation for Harare, Chitungwiza, Epworth and Ruwa.
The public input will help sort out how wards have changed since the last delimitation as new suburbs are created and people move into areas that had few residents before or move out of areas that are now mostly commercial. This has meant some of the wards in the local authorities have huge populations, far larger than average and some are quite small in population, at least when averages are looked at.
Constituencies are formed by combining wards together and, by law, need to have similar numbers of voters, so the number of wards forming a constituency can vary.
In a statement on Monday, Secretary for Provincial Affairs and Devolution for Harare Metropolitan Province Tafadzwa Muguti said the voter imbalances now warrant the review of boundaries to enhance local authority service delivery and make governance easier and fairer.
He said on May 24, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba gazetted ZEC’s intention to undertake the 2022 National Delimitation which involves fixing and reviewing electoral boundaries in line with provisions of the Constitution as read with sections of the Electoral Act.
“The last delimitation exercise was carried out in 2008 and, due to demographic and settlement dynamics, there have been significant changes to voter populations, which, in most cases, have resulted in imbalances in ward voter profiles across the whole Metropolitan Province.”
The Ministry of Local Government and Public Works had convened a National Inception Meeting which tasked all provinces to gather views of organisations, groups and individuals on how ward boundaries could be reviewed for consideration by ZEC in the impending national delimitation.
Pursuant to that, Mr Muguti said the provincial delimitation task team of the Provincial Development Committee is rolling out a stakeholder outreach programme in the City of Harare, Chitungwiza Municipality, Epworth Local Board and Ruwa Local Board, to hear and document ideas and suggestions on the review of ward boundaries as well as any proposal to change the number of wards in each local authority to viable and manageable levels.
Mr Muguti noted that while the committee will receive representations through meetings, stakeholders were also free to deposit written submissions at provincial offices.
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