LOCAL authorities should promote the development of their human capital to achieve their goals, Local Government and Public Works minister Winston Chitando has said.
Chitando made the remarks at a strategic planning review workshop held in Harare last week.
He said local authorities should reflect government’s 2030 upper middle-income economy vision.
“Human capital is the key for the local authorities to achieve their goals and the Local Government Board has the responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient skills set for all local authorities to achieve the 2023 visions per the expectations by the ministry. By 2030, the local authority should be run and reflect the middle-income economy,” he said.
Chitando said President Emmerson Mnangagwa plans to launch a roadmap for all local authorities this week.
“We need a local government system, a local authority system, which resonates with the needs of the income scores. That’s what we need,” he said.
“So, what it means is after the President launches the vision, which will enable the development of the Vision 2030 and its expectations, we need to get that together. And let’s say the cities, the local authorities, how do you move towards the vision. We have to do that by ourselves.
“However, human capital, people in local authorities, will be the key to driving the performance of local authorities towards the vision which we have and generally speaking in terms of the human capital, we are talking of your recruitment, we are talking of your performance, enhancing performance, measuring performance, capacity building and other aspects of human capital management.”
The workshop evaluated strategic plan implementation, identified local authority challenges, reviewed board design structure and proposed a new disaster system to effectively manage board workload.