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Leonard Ncube, [email protected] 

THE Hwange Local Board (HLB) and Harare City Council have up to Friday to submit their reviewed budget proposals for this year, after the Government rejected their initial applications, citing various reasons.

HLB and City of Harare had their budgets rejected outrightly, when most local authorities got approvals subject to a number of issues being addressed.

The country has 92 local authorities, 32 urban and 60 rural district councils.

Government has over the years expressed concern over a number of grey areas and compliance issues in the budget making process by local authorities, including delays in submitting their budgets, failure to implement recommendations from the Auditor General and Parliament of Zimbabwe, as well as falling short of meeting some governance issues.

Hwange residents say  they have lost faith in the council leadership, which they accuse of not being pro-service delivery, resulting in some people reportedly boycotting paying bills and rates, which is further crippling the local authority.

They accused the HLB management, in particular, of ignoring submissions by residents, saying issues raised by Government would have been avoided had the council listened to its stakeholders.

Efforts to get a comment from HLB continuously proved fruitless as the acting town secretary, Mr Paul Mabhureni, did not responded to questions sent to him a fortnight ago.

In an interview in Victoria Falls, Local Government and Public Works Minister, Winston Chitando, said the change in the budget template following the launch of a blueprint by President Mnangagwa affected councils’ applications.

Some local authorities had their budget proposals approved,but with conditions to be met.

“They have been given until the 19th of April to submit their revised budgets, which will be interrogated and we take it from there,” said the Minister. 

“We hope they will come up with something, which will be ready and suitable for approval.”

He said Government will continue capacitating local authorities with knowledge on how to comply with Government requirements. In many instances, the Government has dispatched teams to train local authority officials on various aspects of local governance, especially at a time when the Second Republic is implementing the Whole of Government Approach.

“You have to look at everything in terms of the blueprint that the President launched on 1 November, so by following the blueprint, it meant that the template for approval then changed,” said Minister Chitando. 

“There are budgets that were approved unconditionally and there are some that were approved with conditions, whereby local authorities are being told to look at some issues. 

“However, we are working closely with the local authorities, but the bottom line is that the blueprint is a good base for our local authorities to move towards an upper middle income society by 2030,” the Minister explained.

HLB administers the eastern side of Hwange town, mainly Baobab, Empumalanga and Chibondo areas, although the composition of its councillors includes those representing concession areas managed by Hwange Colliery Company, Zimbabwe Power Company and the National Railways of Zimbabwe. 

Hwange residents have implored the Government to speed up the incorporation of concession wards and that water management be solely managed by HLB. 

HLB is one of the four local boards in Matabeleland North, including Lupane, as well as newly established Binga and Tsholotsho. Victoria Falls City Council is the only urban council in the province.