The Sunday News
GOVERNMENT is working on modalities of appointing special interest councillors to help provide special expertise and improve service provision in all the country’s local authorities.
In an interview with Sunday News, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo said the ministry’s mandate was to ensure that there was effective service delivery and one strategy of doing this was to appoint special interest councillors to help in areas of expertise where the councils were lacking.
The minister said this was not an issue of imposing individuals on council but on improving service delivery within the local authorities.
“All that I am interested in is improving service delivery. The initial intent of appointing these councillors is to add on expertise within these local authorities. We don’t want a scenario where councillors are being overpowered by council officials; they should have some form of technical experience which will help them whenever they are making crucial decisions.
“As you might know some of our councillors don’t have any technical experience in terms of finance or even infrastructure development. So with that background we have a provision to appoint special interest councillors to assist them make such crucial decisions and subsequently improve service delivery,” said Dr Chombo.
He said his ministry would consult the councils, district and provincial administrators to decide where the councils were lacking and identify technocrats to be appointed as the special interest councillors.
“I know previously this has been met with stiff resistance from the elected councillors but if they are serious about service delivery they will realise that this is for them. We don’t want a situation where they are misled by council officials who will be taking advantage of the fact that they (councillors) will be novices in various council-related fields.
“As I said when these councillors began their terms in office, this time around we mean business. The image of the country is not determined by the Government but these local authorities that oversee grassroot development, hence personally I won’t rest until I am satisfied that service delivery is at its level best,” Dr Chombo said.
He said the appointment of special interest councillors would be a process expected to be complete by the end of the year.
“We will obviously begin with the major centres, this being Harare and Bulawayo before going to other councils,” Dr Chombo said.
He said it was unfortunate that some people viewed this as a political move but emphasised that it was only a means to help improve service delivery among these local authorities.
“A lot of corruption allegations have been levelled against these urban councils, some resolutions have been questionable therefore with these special interest councillors we want to try to avoid this. When these councillors were elected most of them did not even have the expertise on how local governance business was conducted hence the need for some expertise to advise them on a few critical issues,” said the minister.
In 2013 Bulawayo councillors clashed with the minister and the city’s town clerk, Mr Middleton Nyoni, after the town clerk swore in two special interest councillors — Ms Sipiwe Ncube and Dr Gatsha Mazithulela — following a directive from Dr Chombo.
