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Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
Masvingo City council is failing to effectively deliver services to its stakeholders due to shortage of staff, amid reports that 40 percent of key positions are vacant. This comes in the wake of reports that the local authority has not been able to audit its books for the past three years due to absence of an internal auditor.

Like any quasi-Government department, local authority’s recruitment policies are controlled by the central Government, which in this case has frozen some of the key positions.

It is against this background that Masvingo City Council has been having a vacuum within its administration, as some positions could not be filled without approval from the central government.

Mayor Collen Maboke said the situation was seriously affecting day-to-day administration work of council as some decisions were now taking long before being passed.

“We are somewhat handicapped as Masvingo City due to shortage of staff.
“We do not have full staff complement as we are operating at 60 percent and that gap is evident in critical departments like accounts,” he said.

Mr Maboke said while the challenges were beyond council’s control, management was still answerable when some targets were not met.

“The unfortunate part of it is that residents will always need their services and yet the manpower is not at the expected level,” he said. “There should not been any excuse because those few are supposed to cover the gaps. As it is, council has a serious backlog on audited books as the last audit was done in 2015.

“This is due to the fact that there were three key posts within accounts department which were not filled and we could not do anything, as the matter was controlled by the central Government through Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Ministry.”

Mr Maboke said the situation was now better as they had been allowed to fill some critical positions, raising hopes that “by end of 2019, there won’t be any backlog.”

He said council was working on recruiting a full-time public relations officer to interface with residents and stakeholders.