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THE Zimbabwe Combined Residents and Ratepayers Association (ZICORRA) has called on local authorities to embrace decentralisation as it will go a long way in improving service delivery.ZICORRA says the City of Harare needs to adopt decentralisation as soon as possible because service delivery has gone from bad to worse.
ZICORRA Harare provincial chairperson, Lawrence Kuleya, said the City of Harare can improve service delivery by allowing district offices to be more independent in their operations.
“The operations of district offices determine the standard of service delivery in wards.
“Currently operations of many district offices are hampered by external interference or failures from other council offices,” he said.
“There is no reason why every ward should not have its own refuse trucks. This is why we end up having some residents or associations assisting district offices either in their individual capacities or collectively because most district offices are struggling.”
Kuleya said lack of autonomy was hampering district offices from delivering services.
“The district offices are struggling because they are not independent, they don’t have their own refuse trucks or resources to implement some things for their own wards,” he said.
Kuleya said council should think outside the box and improve ward-based infrastructure and water harvesting technology as some wards need to be divided because they can no longer be under one district office.
He urged council to seriously look into this and warned that if ignored, this would further hamper service delivery.
“Delimitation processes might reset boundaries for some wards, but council itself must also do its part and put up new district offices, council clinics, council workshops and so on, according to the population they cover,” he said.
“Infrastructural upgrade will also be needed pertaining to water and other services residents complain about, which means council must look at various water harvesting technologies.
‘‘Without proper planning, service delivery will always be poor.
“Harare in general should also work towards completing its master plan. This goes a long way for planning purposes too,” said Kuleya.
Online Reporter