BY CATHERINE MUCHIRI THE Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development has encouraged Zimbabwean authorities to come up with a devolution framework to facilitate smooth implementation of the devolution policy.
The statement comes as central government and local authorities continue to squabble over devolution funds.
Local authorities that are mainly led by the opposition feel that central government is deliberately not disbursing devolution funds for developmental projects to spite the opposition.
In its recent report on devolution, Zimcodd said: “Central government must be involved with the overall policy, setting standards and facilitation of oversight and regulatory mechanisms including auditing of public funds, while local authorities as lower tiers of government must focus on infrastructural development and service delivery.
“Further, timely resourcing of the institutions responsible for driving the devolution agenda is a critical success factor as observed in other countries. Given the shrinking fiscal space at the macroeconomic level, the central government must enhance autonomy and revenue generation capacity of local governments, including measures to optimise collection of revenue by local authorities to support devolution programmes.”
Zimcodd also insists that citizens should provide oversight, scrutinise, monitor and evaluate local authorities’ service delivery.
“The lower tiers of government should provide platforms for citizen engagement in devolution processes to determine the nature and quality of services delivered within their jurisdictions. The failure by the central government to disburse funding to roll out key capital projects has rendered the Harare City Council (HCC) ineffective to deliver social services. It was reported that the cash-strapped government has so far disbursed US$381 000 from US$5,38 million it allocated the city council for key projects, halting projects supported by devolution funds,” Zimcodd indicated.
A recent survey showed that delayed disbursement of funds and inflationary pressures are rendering council budget allocations pegged in the local currency, meaningless within months after budget approval; and this is compromising service delivery and the implementation of development projects.
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“Fiscal space continues to shrink as government grants constitute only 11% of the local authority revenue. As a result, service delivery is on a downward trend with the state of infrastructure in most local authorities very poor with waste management, water, and road infrastructure on top of the list,” Zimcodd said while expressing concern over accusations that the Local Government ministry was interfering or sabotaging local authorities development projects.
Norton MP Temba Mliswa (Independent) tweeted: “It is saddening to notice that the Local Government minister can watch the waterworks of our country’s capital completely shut down without showing much concern, this is the same man who corruptly pushed for the purchase and installation of water pumps, the big question is, what is the purpose of water pumps when you don’t have water?”
Other example of cases of abuse of devolution funds include the questionable Belarus fire tenders deal and the Pomona waste to energy project awarded to Geogenix BV, which requires HCC to pay US$22 000 per day for waste.
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