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THE ongoing clean up at the Harare City Council was long overdue. We hope this is just the beginning of a sustained effort to revive the service delivery role of the local authority. Harare lost its sunshine gloss years ago and in spite of a lot of talk, little has been done to effectively bring city operations back on track.

Broken down termini shelters, inadequate public toilets, terrible roads, erratic supply of water that is of highly questionable appearance and uncollected refuse have become the ordinary state of affairs.

There are also repeated reports that while the top management enjoy unbelievable perks, ordinary workers are going for months without salaries.

All this points to deep-seated problems within the municipality and the staff head count is a good place to start in cleaning up the mess.

The biggest challenge to service delivery has been the percentage of collected revenue being directed towards the payroll every month.

There have been many stories of people drawing salaries from the city coffers yet they would not be doing any job that serves the ratepayers.

This head count should settle all that forever.

The City of Harare is a public institution which is run on public funds.

There should be no secrets from the ratepayer on matters including the number of people employed and what they are earning.

We cannot understand why the executive cannot come out in the open about their earnings and other operations including their procurement and awarding of tenders.

The mandate of the council is very clear; to deliver services to the people.

These services include provision of shelter through new housing developments, water reticulation, waste management, road maintenance as well as health and education services.

It is only with an efficient work force that is adequately remunerated for jobs done that they can deliver on their mandate.

It is reported that the audit has been initiated following reports by the Comptroller and Auditor-General Ms Mildred Chiri that highlighted irregularities in the operations of local authorities to parliament.

The Comptroller and Auditor-General has reported on a number of areas where irregularities have been unearthed.

Many State linked operations especially authorities have been shown as having been operating procedurally.

Figures that the organisations have been prejudiced off through sheer inefficiency and outright criminal acts run into several millions.

But no one has been brought to book as yet.

The same people accused of malfeasance remain in charge.

We believe that this grants them apparent immunity to continue to run affairs as they have been doing.

Action needs to be taken to regularise all operations and prosecute those found guilty of criminal acts.

Public confidence in State systems would be greatly strengthened if action follows reports and recommendations.

Otherwise there is no point in spending resources to generate reports that are consigned to the dustbin while the problems continue unabated.

We are also happy to hear that similar audits are being carried out on other local authorities as the City of Harare is not the only local authority that has been dogged by reports of corruption and failure to fulfil its mandate through acceptable standards of service delivery.