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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter 

THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has said due to the prevailing economic challenges it has suspended most of its capital projects to remain afloat.

In an interview, Bulawayo Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube said council has suspended some of its contracts due to changes in the foreign currency regime.

He said six housing projects and a sewer project among others have been suspended.

“As it stands we no longer have any budget because when Government introduced the interbank exchange rates, the official rate was at 2,5 but now the rates are hovering at around 8. The Government last week in its Cabinet report stated that all the contracts are in US dollars so we have to restate them using the US dollar. The contracts are there but they cannot continue under the circumstances because we cannot fund them. What that means is we no longer have a budget for them,” he said.

Mr Dube said the supplementary budget that the local authority has proposed still falls short for the council to effectively deliver services.

“That supplementary budget that we presented and is being advertised up to the 17th of June, the increment was 42 percent. But we are talking about more than 800 percent variation of all commodities and prices. We are in a terrible situation and what that means is that we are going to stop implementing any projects and try as much as possible to maintain what is there to keep the city going,” said Mr Dube.

“We have six housing projects that are affected and contractors were already at an advanced stage and when they started demanding their payments in restated figures we were saying it could not be possible. This was until Government said the contracts should be restated in the interbank rate. What that means is that our budget can no longer fund those projects. We also have water and sewer projects that we cannot proceed with as we no longer have budgets for them.” 

He said the Epping Forest project which is at 60 percent complete was at risk.

He said the project is a critical alternative water source for the city this year as council will soon decommission Umzingwane and Ncema dams. 

“Our budget right now is next to zero. The 42 percent budget that we would increase would see us do projects that are strictly essential. Otherwise all these other projects we are going to simply put them aside,” he said. 

Mr Dube said in the next two months, council will announce its five-year plan which Government has approved.

“Early this year we went to Victoria Falls as stakeholders of the city council. We came up with a strategic plan. It’s ready, we have submitted it to Government as per requirement. It was submitted to Government in an Integrated Results Management format. 

“We are trying to simplify it in a way that would be understood by the stakeholders. In the next two months, we are going to share the simplified version of course having gone through council,” said Mr Dube. — @nqotshili.