By Martin Muleya.
Mutare, Zimbabwe (News of The South) Struggling Mutare City Council is contemplating engaging the services of debt collectors to help them recover millions of dollars they are owed by residents both in low and high density suburbs.
Addressing women at a dialogue meeting on service delivery challenges on duty bearers organised by Women Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) ward 9 councillor Chrispen Dube said the local authority was getting peanuts in its banking hall in terms of services it would have rendered to residents yet it would have channelled a fortune to service all the residential suburbs dotted in the city by way of garbage collection and provision of sanitation facilities.
Cllr Dube reiterated that some of the prominent people in the Eastern border city were making a lot of noise about the local authority not living to its mandate yet they are not even bothered to pay their water bills which are gobbling into thousands of dollars.
He said such a stance has left the City Council with no choice other than to engage the services of debt collectors as the town house has no other means of generating revenue other than having its residents religiously paying the services they offer every month.
“The main contributors of not paying water in Mutare are the prominent people in the city. Most of them owe council more than $40 000 yet they are vocal that council is not performing. They are the ones who are driving this issue of not paying.
“So we are saying we need to engage the debt collectors on those issues before we can address any other issue. Even individuals need to pay for council to deliver, we have no other way of generating revenue. But we get the money from residents and stakeholders and use it for service delivery.
“So we are saying as council we need money everyone should owe up. Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” said Cllr Dube.
The dialogue meeting which was held under the theme “A Zimbabwean society where women and girls fully enjoy their rights”, was necessitated by the inadequate interaction between local authorities and ordinary people, resulting in the growing mistrust between the two, as well as failure to attend critical issues in suburbs.
Speaking at the same occasion Dangamvura ward 8 councillor Sophy Gwasira took a swipe on women who literary dump baby diapers at every other place resulting in the resurrection of undesignated dumping sites.
She encouraged women to keep their environment clean and said the local authority was commuting itself by making sure that refuse collection is done once a week in each of the 19 wards in Dangamvura high density suburb.
“Some of the challenges we face as women is the unilateral dumping of baby pampers. There are already some undesignated dumping sites of pampers in the high density suburbs particularly by young women. I have engaged residents in my ward for example urging them to have a sense of ownership because we need to keep the environment we live in clean all the time, and even in the bible it is said cleanliness is next to godliness.
“At the moment the local authority all things being equal every ward one day per work there will be refuse trucks coming to take away the garbage. So women need to dispose of baby papers in sacks and pit them on designated points for them to be collected by refuse trucks. Young women are the most culprits who dispose baby pampers willy nilly and need them to cooperate as well so keep our environment clean,” implored Cllr Gwasira.
National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO) provincial coordinator Joseph Kauzani who facilitated the dialogue meeting emphasised that the meeting was as a result of various issues and concerns that have been coming from the WCoZ members from Dangamvura community. One of the perennial water shortages and poor service delivery in the community especially Gimboki squalid settlement.
e said some areas in Dangamvura have over 15 years never received tap /running water and its a pity that this has been the situation for a while.
“Today’s meeting was premised on the fact that key duty bearers were supposed to respond to these and many other service delivery concerns from their residents. This is one of the key objectives of the Civic Engagement for Accountability and Democracy in Zimbabwe (CEADZ) project being run by WCoZ such aims at promoting civic especially women’s engagement with duty bearers and elected officials, to foster local social accountability mechanisms, develop synergies for community development and democratic governance with women at the centre of everything,” he noted.
The recent dialogue meeting being championed by WCoZ Manicaland chapter is part of the on-going efforts to strengthen women’s advocacy in governance processes (SWAG) so that they can fully air it out their views without fear, favour or prejudice.
This in the process will lead to transparency, accountability and efficient service delivery by the duty bearers at local level since they will be knowing that there is a strong women’s movement providing checks and balances.
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