adminIn an interview city mayor Alderman Femius Chakabuda said the local authority had made submissions to a number of ministries requesting assistance to hire municipal security personnel.
“We are facing serious challenges in policing our by-laws because we don’t have manpower. The number of municipal police officers that we have is far below the expected number. We only have 70 officers against the recommended number of 180 municipal police officers,” said Ald Chakabuda.
He said it was the local authority’s duty to enforce council by-laws, and not the police.
“By right it is the municipal police who should enforce council by-laws and the ZRP is only assisting us in our endeavour to instill some order.
“However, the challenge we have is that we are short of the required security personnel. That is the reason why we have made submissions to the Finance and Local
Government ministries requesting them to allow us to hire the personnel that we dearly need. Once we are given the go-ahead, we will start the recruitment as soon as possible,” he said.
He said the council was also committed to seeing more women joining the municipal police but the challenge was that most of those willing to be part of the staff did not have the prerequisites.
“We are much committed to addressing gender inequality in our recruitment and this is across the board. But the problem that we have, especially on the issue of having municipal officers, is that most women who apply don’t meet our requirements,”he said.
He said the city council was yet to make a decision because they ascribed to gender parity and equality.
Bongani Ndlovu