The Sunday News
The Bulawayo City Council has for a long time enjoyed the distinction of being one of the best run local authorities in the country. While we believe that the city earned that recognition initially, we also believe over the years the city has relied on past glory to carry it, and the fact that other local authorities have fared much worse than it.
Thus, instead of seeing a marked improvement in service delivery, residents have actually witnessed a gradual stagnation and in some instances downright dereliction of duty in terms of service delivery.
The city’s roads need attention just as the sewers need even more attention while waste management has seriously been compromised of late and a lot more areas need our City Fathers to gird their loins and put shoulder to wheel to ensure that ratepayers get value for money.
However, reports coming from the council chambers seem to suggest that these may not be among the priorities of our City Fathers who seem hell bent on feathering their nests, even at the peril of using ill-gotten feathers for such adornment.
Elsewhere in this edition we carry an article in which Bulawayo City councillors have made representations to the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, to increase their allowances.
Bulawayo City councillors have demanded an allowance increase of more than 450 percent, a move that will see an ordinary councillor getting $1 000 every month. Council’s least paid workers earn $180 a month. The timing of the request is quite terrible in view of the many challenges the council faces financially.
We are not saying that the councillors should not be rewarded for their service but we doubt if they are the right people to evaluate their service at a time when heaps of refuse lie uncollected in many suburbs and streams of sewage confront many residents.
We are not sure if this is the service that ratepayers pay for each month, and whether residents would recommend an increase in councillors’ allowances in view of the return on investment Bulawayo people are getting from them. Also, it is quite instructive that the mayor Councillor Martin Moyo does not believe the issue of their allowances should be anybody’s concern when they seek to deep into the city’s coffers.
“It is a matter between us and the minister, of which I believe it won’t be professional for me to discuss it in the media,” said Clr Moyo.
Has the mayor ever encountered anything relating to transparency and accountability in those corridors of power at the City Hall? These councillors hold those positions in trust on behalf of residents who have reposed their faith in their lot.
Is this the same council that turned down council employees’ demand for a salary increment citing financial problems? Really! If it is the same council then we believe the councillors should walk their talk because residents will certainly see through their ruse of waylaying a new minister with a request that was jettisoned by the previous minister for lack of merit.
Being a councillor is not a full- time job and those that seek to turn the role into such should be advised to look elsewhere for income to sustain their lifestyles, not the already overburdened ratepayers.
We believe the very notion of the councillors prioritising their needs ahead of those that they represent reeks heavily of insincerity and is at variance with the principles of servanthood. May the real councillors please stand up and be counted.
We note that the councillors want to be paid lofty amounts and even seek to equate council business to full-time employment so that they can draw from the impoverished residents, some of them quite elderly and facing the danger of losing their properties due to rates arrears.
We are sure these struggling ratepayers are not the councillors’ concern; the City Fathers can come up with resolutions to deal with impunity their failure to pay after the important issue of their allowances!
Bulawayo can only maintain its place as one of the best run local authorities not through the failure of other local authorities but through its conscious efforts to improve service delivery to a point where residents would even suggest that they be rewarded for their tangible contribution to the development of the city.
We have not seen such trailblazing by the council in any of its service areas, and we stand to be corrected in case we looked in the wrong areas.
