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Patrick Chitumba, Midlands Bureau Chief
THE Government has ordered local authorities in the country to link their accounting systems with Treasury for purposes of improved accountability.

Gweru City Council (GCC) has already started working on the automation process in line with the directive, Town Clerk, Ms Elizabeth Gwatipedza said.

“We received a directive from the Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Ministry that our systems be linked with that of the Ministry of Finance,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

“I think it’s for accountability purposes and there are officials from the Ministry of Finance who are here looking into the matter. I was told that all the local authorities in the country will link with the Ministry of Finance.”

Ms Gwatipedza said GCC has to adopt the systems, applications and products implementation (SAP) or smart  response technology (SRT) computer programmes as it migrates from non-automated operations.

She said using the manual system was not only archaic, but brought problems of accountability and transparency in business operations.

“Next week we will be engaging service providers to make presentations and I have since tasked each head of department to come up with a list of areas where they feel we need to computerise.

“Most of the activities here are being done manually and we have departments being run without even a single computer and such operations can breed corruption,” the Town Clerk said.

—@pchitumba1