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Blessings Chidakwa and Marytise Vambayi

Harare City Council has presented a $41, 8 billion budget with the local authority outlining its focus areas which include Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), social services as well as public safety and security.

Presenting the budget at Town House today, finance and development chairperson councillor Tichavona Mhetu said the budget’s main thrust should be to spur sustainable service delivery and improve the well-being of the residents of Harare.

“The 2022 budget estimates are advised by outcomes and outputs in the six programme areas.

“The predominant focus is on WASH and the budget estimates speak to this aspect by adequately providing for capital and revenue estimates outlay, which constitute 43,3 percent of the capital budget and 43,7 percent of revenue budget respectively,” he said.

Cllr Mhetu blamed the council’s poor performance in 2021 due to a plethora of issues ranging from inefficient internal systems, poor planning particularly in project management, enterprise resource planning platform, which is not fully integrated, a structure that is not responsive to programme based budgeting and low revenue collection efficiencies.

“On the revenue side, we managed to collect $8, 788 billion as of October 31, 2021 and we are projecting to collect a further $2, 610 billion by end of December 2021,” he said.