‘Serve people’, BCC, Umguza RDC told

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Government has ordered the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) and Umguza Rural District Council (RDC) to constitute a joint committee that will help resolve a decade-long dispute that has seen some outlying suburbs go without key amenities like water and sewer reticulation.

A number of suburbs inclusive of Mbundane and Emthunzini have been operating without key social amenities with BCC refusing to connect them to their water and sewer reticulation system, arguing that the suburbs did not fall under its jurisdiction despite it being located just at the boundary between the City of Bulawayo and Umguza.

There was hope in 2017 when the two local authorities reportedly signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) where BCC agreed that they will service Mbundane and Emthunzini suburbs with water and sewer reticulation.

However, fours years on, the suburbs are still reeling in the same predicament. Commenting on the matter, Local Government and Public Works Minister, Cde July Moyo said it was worrying that the situation was taking longer to resolve noting that there was a need for the two local authorities to find common ground so as to give residents the required service delivery. He said with the joint committee formed it made it easier to designate responsibilities and resource mobilisation.

“In the constitution the delineation of municipalities, cities, districts is done by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and we had given ourselves a ten year period where we would not change boundaries.

“However, we have in our statutes, both in the Urban Councils Act and Rural Districts Councils Act, enabling legislations, clauses which create joint committees between two local authorities which are adjacent to each other and those areas, where you think they are in Bulawayo but are physically in Umguza, we should create a joint committee so that the two local authorities work out on how best to go about service delivery,” said Minister Moyo.

In a recent interview, Bulawayo Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube said their major hiccup was the suburbs’ lack of relevant infrastructure for them to be able to connect water and sewer.

“I can confirm that we collected $253 from each family but when we had to connect, we discovered that the infrastructure which was meant to be put in place by the developers was not up, this thereby being a major setback in the scheme.

“In Mbundane for example, we now have to connect a larger area of which we only have the capacity to connect 150 households. We now need to improve our off-site infrastructure to support the whole project but it is not an easy thing as it requires a lot of money, but we won’t neglect the suburb because it falls under our master plan,” said Mr Dube.

According to the Presidential Proclamation 15E of 2004 and the subsequent Statutory Instruments that created the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare, metropolitan boundaries were declared as covering a radius of up to 40 kilometres, most of these areas are currently under the jurisdiction of Umguza RDC.