CHINHOYI residents recently forced an adjournment of a budget performance review workshop for two days after raising some anomalies in a report that claimed that the municipality’s budget performance as of August 31 was more than 200%.
Tempers flared after town clerk Maxwell Kaitano told stakeholders that the budget performance was 239%.
He said the budget was high as council had used the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe interbank rate of ZWL$700, while the monthly billing used the prevailing interbank rate.
“The performance target as of August 31, 2023 was ZWL$9,8 billion, and the actual collections were ZWL$7,3 billion, which represents 74% collection efficiency. The collection efficiency figure excludes the budgeted figures and revenues received from grants and sorghum levies,” he said.
Zimbabwe National Organisation of Residents and Associations Trust Mashonaland West chairperson Liberty Chitiya told NewsDay that the presented budget review document had a lot of anomalies.
“We asked for an adjournment of 48 hours from Monday to today Wednesday (yesterday) after noticing anomalies, misrepresentations and gaps during the 30 minutes that we perused the 10-page document that feeds into the 2024 budget,” he said.
“A budget performance is usually measured over a hundred percent, not that percentage. It’s meant to confuse the residents and ratepayers, who are demanding transparency and accountability.”
Chitiya said it was also evident that devolution funds were allegedly misappropriated, giving residents enough ammunition to refuse to rubber-stamp budget processes.
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However, Kaitano said the meeting was adjourned because the residents wanted more information on what was presented.
“We are still in the consultation period. When the stakeholders need time, we give them. That 239% needs an explanation from our director of finance who did number crunching,” he said.
