Why wait for intervention?

Chombo or the residents of Harare?
Reasons for the questions are somehow justified as the city management only explodes into action when Minister

Chombo demands action. Councillors have been crying for this and that to be implemented without success. In other words, the employees deride the calibre of the councillors, whom they hardly respect.
Residents alike have complained but have not received a shadow of what they should receive in terms of service delivery. It appears the city has been privatised and information about developments is regarded top “secret”. But again is this a

healthy and sustainable situation? Is this the Harare we want? Is this the type of management we want? Why should we have a management that requires ministerial push to do its job?
Does the challenge lie with the Local Government Board that approves the employment of all senior managers? Is it that the board is manned by incompetent people who appoint equally incompetent managers?

The Local Government Board was put in place to ensure that local authorities, especially the smaller ones do not end up with inappropriate managers.
Why is it that the board approves for appointment second or third-rate candidate for each post? Whose interests is the board serving? My view is that Minister Chombo should not be calling for these meetings to enforce that action on service delivery is taken. The Minister’s job should actually be very light. Whoever is Minister of Local Government should actually meet local authorities such as Harare to give compliments and not to read the Riot Act.

But maybe the minister has no choice but to superintend over service delivery. But again how did some of the managers find their way to the top posts when it requires ministerial drive to get the work done.
What has become apparent during these ministerial meetings is that there is a lot of lying and name dropping as excuses by some top managers not to do certain things.

Councillors have been made to believe that Minister Chombo is all out to get them out of office, as confirmed by Clr Panganayi Charumbira, at a recent meeting. He expressed relief that Minister Chombo was fatherly and was willing to work with the MDC-T councillors confirming that he had been misinformed. Clr Peter Moyo complained that attempts to meet the minister were being blocked.

Ever since Minister Chombo met with the Harare management led by Town Clerk Dr Tendai Mahachi and councillors led by Mayor Masunda there has been a remarkable improvement in service delivery. Dr Mahachi spoke with renewed vigour in front of the Minister and promised to invest up to US$350 million in service delivery this year alone.

He had spent the previous two weeks holed in planning meetings at the behest of Minister Chombo. Had the Minister not prodded him to act what would have been the situation?

Why did he require the minister to ask for a work plan in the first place? In a normal set up the town clerk should have drawn a comprehensive and well-researched consultative document to share with the Government. Instead of reporting in the past tense what has been done the majority of directors were reporting in future tense. My bet is as good as anybody’s who religiously follow what happens at Town House. Had the meeting happened in June the tenses would have remained the same.

Engineering services director Engineer Philip Pfukwa promised to resurface 1 000km of road network this year. Harare has 5 000km of dilapidated road network. The rehabilitation will see the same stretch of road fixed with street lights.

Dr Mahachi said the money is available. We all wait to see. Harare has over the years drawn project plans but has failed to implement them. In the past five years — the city has drawn as many as five strategic plans, which have literally died on paper.

 

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