The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
THE Government will soon resume the disbursement of devolution funds to various local authorities after briefly stopping as Treasury focused on channelling funds to fight Covid-19.
The Government allocated funds to be shared among the 10 provinces based on a number of factors such as poverty levels in all rural districts, quality of infrastructure and size of population. The principle of devolution is part of the Constitution that was adopted in 2013, although its implementation began in earnest with the coming in of the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa.
This year, the Government has set aside $2,9 billion for local authorities, although disbursement was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Treasury had released approximately $290 million to local authorities to date. In an interview yesterday, Minister of Finance and Economic Development Professor Mthuli Ncube said they now felt they had done significant work towards the country’s fight to contain the Covid-19 pandemic hence there a was need to start disbursing the rest of the devolution funds to the districts.
“We are working on ensuring that every district receives what had been allocated to them under the devolution fund, what had affected us was this pandemic, which saw us taking most of our funds to repair hospitals around the country and buy Personal Protective Equipment.
“However, we feel now we have done the bulk of requirements in the fight to contain the pandemic, we will thus now start working on disbursing the rest of the funds as guided by the budget so as to ensure we push the necessary development in the various districts,” said Prof Ncube.
He said the fund was a key strategy of pushing development in the districts noting that this was evident in the past projects which were done that were more rooted in the grassroots.
“The devolution fund since its inception has gone a long way in developing our communities, if you look in 2019, we managed to fix roads, clinics, schools and various other facilities to empower our communities. However, it is not only the devolution funds which are pushing development in the districts, we also have the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) where there is the construction of dams and other key infrastructure in the country, inclusive of the Gwayi-Shangani Dam,” he said.
Prof Ncube revealed that he had already started engagements for the 2021 national budget where he was going around the country to observe priority projects that had to be prioritised for next year.
“Government is also working on key road rehabilitation works, where we felt that even if we are battling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot just sit back but have to continue working, these roads include the Harare-Beitbridge highway, which is a very important economic road.
“I have recently been touring the country of late, where I am observing where funding is urgently required, which irrigations should we urgently rehabilitate and which infrastructural development should we focus on so that come November when I present the 2021 budget we also include funding to such projects,” said the Minister.
Meanwhile, Umzingwane Member of Parliament, Retired Brigadier-General Levi Mayihlome has said they intend to utilise part of the district’s devolution fund towards equipping science laboratories in the district. Speaking during a tour of the roads infrastructure in the district and equipment that had been bought under the devolution fund by the Umzingwane Rural District Council on Friday, Rtd Brig-Gen Mayihlome revealed that laboratories constructed at 11 schools were not operational due to lack of equipment.
“We want to ensure that the devolution funds are used to buy equipment for laboratories for our schools as we aim to produce more science-oriented students, rather than the current situation where a majority of our students are arts oriented and end up spending years unemployed once they graduate. Since these funds are managed locally, it is easy for us to be biased towards our children. We want our children dominating at the National University of Science and Technology and Gwanda State University. We really can’t relax when we have 11 schools in our district that constructed laboratories but which are not operational due to lack of equipment,” he said.
