adminStephen Mpofu
OTHERWISE flaunted by many, especially in colonial Rhodesia as The City of Progress, is Gweru slipping down the path of retrogression?
Zimbabweans may this week be asking this question, dismayed by a story published in this paper three days ago to the effect that three commissioners appointed by the government to run the affairs of Gweru City Council following the suspension of mayor, councillor Hamutendi Kombayi, along with all 18 councillors for alleged corruption, gobbled more than $67,000 in allowances over a period of just two months — a staggering figure by any account.
The city fathers were pushed into the shade by the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, to facilitate investigations into alleged malpractices in the manner in which they conducted the affairs of the Midlands province’s capital.
Like many, if not most local authorities in the country, Gweru City Council is cash-strapped and has actually been described by the chairperson of the Combined Gweru Residents’ Association, Cornelius Selipiwe, as being broke.
The chairperson suggested instead that the parent ministry should intervene by paying for the upkeep of the commissioners during their temporary tenure of office in the beleaguered council.
But commission chairperson Tsunga Mhangami disputed the $67,000 as a true reflection of the amount in food, accommodation and travel allowances given to him and fellow commissioners, Mark Choga and Parenyi Chomunorwa.
In fact, commissioner Mhangami described the schedule of payments as a mischievous act by people bent on discrediting his commission. He said he was ready to provide the true figures of how much money had actually been spent on the trio from the time they started work in the city.
Now, the disputed amounts of allowances said to have been paid to the commissioners puts the residents of Gweru back into square one as they, and not some obscenely rich source somewhere in the air, pay rates for the upkeep of both the three commissioners as well as for the lifespan of their city.
If, as commissioner Mhangami alleges, the $67,000 amount paid in allowances is trumped up, the parent ministry is again presented with a gargantuan task of finding out just what is going on in that council.
Or is the public being presented with a tip of an iceberg of vicious infighting for power to control the affairs of what proud residents still call Gweru, a city of progress?
In the circumstances, will any right thinking Gweru resident or Zimbabweans per se, accept any schedule of payment that the commission might produce contrary to the one already published and consumed by the wider public?
Or are we on the verge of a new commission being thrown into the fray to displace the one at work in order to stabilise the turbulent civic climate which, whether one likes it or not, accepts it or not, appears seriously to be pervading the hearts and minds of the residents of Gweru?
The city’s residents cough up their hard-earned cash, with some of them earning measly amounts as informal traders, for the city’s lifeblood.
In retrospect, it is probably no exaggeration for this pen to suggest that the controversial amount said to be paid as allowances to the three commissioners in the absence of something drastically low and in keeping with the city’s poverty, as declared by Combined Gweru Residents’ Association’s Selipiwe, is tantamount to milking blood from a cow whose udder has shrunk to virtual emptiness. The sooner Gweru is hauled back into even keel the better the situation will be for the people’s total welfare in that city.
Again the onus lies with the parent ministry to sought out the apparent mess for the good of a city that must enjoy not retrogression but unimpeded progress for its citizens.
And, who knows, any handling and final resolution of the confused yet worrying situation in Gweru might present itself as a cue for any other local authorities in the country grappling with the same challenges that bedevil Gweru.
Online Reporter