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Midlands Bureau Chief

LOCAL Government and Public Works Minister Winston Chitando has approved Gweru City Council’s US$37 million budget for this year.

In a notice, Local Government and Public Works permanent secretary, Dr John Basera, said the minister has approved the 2024 budget estimates for Gweru City Council. 

He said the council must give a plan for updating arrears audits to comply with the Public Finance Management Act and the Urban Councils Act.

“Minister of Local Government and Public Works has approved the 2024 budget estimates for Gweru City Council. Council must deal with low revenue collection,” said Dr Basera.

“Council must utilise the accounting package which is currently not optimised. Council must regulate business interests in line with the provisions of the Urban Councils Act (Chapter 29.15) as instructed by the blueprint.”

Dr Basera said Gweru City Council should adhere to stringent monitoring of issues on the “Call to Action” blueprint quarterly during the year.

Gweru mayor Councillor Martin Chivhoko said the local authority is maintaining the 2023 US$37 million budget informed by the need to lessen the burden on ratepayers.

“Yes, we got communication to the effect that our 2024 budget proposal has been approved by the Minister of Local Government and Public Works. There are also conditions which we must meet such as updating arrears audits to comply with Public Finance Management Act and the Urban Councils Act and how to deal with low revenue collection,” he said.

“We are willing to work on that and the local authority has also set targets to address water challenges bedevilling the city including perennial leakages that are affecting the supply of the precious liquid to residents in the approved budget.”

According to the peer review committee’s recent findings, the local authority needs to modernise its water reticulation system to minimise leakages.

The committee also noted that the city will continue to incur labour, power, and water treatment costs if the problem is not addressed.

The review committee said the council surpassed the water leaks acceptable levels by more than 50 percent, a situation that pointed to heavy loss of treated water in the city.

Due to a lack of capacity to pump enough water from Gwenhoro Dam, the local authority introduced a five-day water rationing schedule.

Gweru City Council is supposed to pump between 60 and 80 megalitres of water per day to meet the city’s daily demand.

However, the local authority is only pumping half of the city’s daily requirement. The council is relying on three water pumps instead of six. 

Gweru City Council is battling to address the city’s perennial water woes that have often seen suburbs in high-lying areas such as Ridgemont, Mkoba 1, 3, 14, 15, 19 and 20 going for months without water.

The infrastructure for piped water in Gweru was developed in the 1950s and designed for a population of about 300 000 people.

The city’s population has grown to about 1,2 million with of half of the population failing to access clean.

Some residents in the city’s low-density suburbs have devised alternatives, which include drilling boreholes while others rely on bottled water.