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Brighton Gumbo, Business Reporter
THE European Union has availed €1,2 million to strengthen the institutional and operational capacity of local authorities in Zimbabwe.

The project titled ‘Local Authorities Capacity Enhancement Project’ (LACEP) is targeting 13 local authorities in Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Bulawayo Metropolitan, Masvingo and Midlands provinces.

Among direct beneficiaries from the project are Binga Rural District Council (RDC), Kusile RDC, Lupane Local Board, Bulawayo City Council, Mangwe RDC, Insiza RDC, Gwanda Town Council among others.

Speaking to Business Chronicle on the sidelines of a training workshop for local authorities and civic society organisations (CSOs) on participatory public policy making in Bulawayo yesterday, LACEP projects coordinator, Philip Kundishora, said there was a need for active participation between the two parties in public policies and programmes as a way to improve local governance and service delivery.

“The training adopts a unique approach of bringing together both participating local authorities from selected provinces as well as CSOs in their areas of jurisdiction,” said Kundishora.

“In this way the training aims at enhancing the capacities of local authorities and CSOs to engage each other actively and routinely in all processes including among others; planning, budgeting, policy making, social accountability, monitoring and evaluation.”

He said local authorities should increase the involvement of the citizens in matters that affect their lives for effective and democratic local governance.

Local government consultant, Kudzai Chatiza, said an external funded local government capacity building programme alone was not sustainable.

“Donors can’t address the financial gaps in our local authorities because the model of service delivery is based on the users paying for services that the local authority provides,” he said.

Chatiza said some local authorities were failing to collect revenue from other sources under their authority because of their poor relations with citizens.

He said the capacity building programme was aimed at strengthening relations between the local authorities and citizens for a sustainable local government.

“We can’t build strong local government on the basis of flying in money from outside the local government area,” Chatiza  said.

LACEP started with a benchmarking activity where it assessed where each local authority was in terms of key areas of service delivery namely revenue collection, participation, waste management, water and sanitation.

It identified a lot of gaps in its initial investigations and has since intervened to try and close the gaps hence the training and capacity building which  started in January and end in June 2017.

Zimbabwe adopted a new constitution in 2013, which includes an important section on local governance.

It lays basis for the devolution of powers and responsibilities to lower tiers of government and emphasising the need for increased citizen participation in government as well as in development processes.