Peter Tanyanyiwa

Harare acting Mayor Councillor Stewart Mutizwa has urged Government to help in addressing issues of uncertainty and leadership gaps that are affecting service delivery.

Since last year there has been infighting at Council and this has affected the city’s capacity to attend to critical service delivery areas.

“The uncertainty and leadership issues have affected service delivery. The appalling state of service delivery is in the public domain because as a city we have failed to provide the most basic of the services,” he said.

“Harare has made headlines for the wrong reasons. Recently The Herald reported that the City is on auto-pilot.

This is so because we only have one substantive director in service, the rest are out on bail for various cases. It is time to change the narrative.”

Acting Mayor Councillor Mutizwa was speaking at an interactive workshop between City of Harare and the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works.
He said City of Harare occupies a strategic position in Zimbabwe and requires stabilization.

Harare, he said, needs stabilization in leadership, in its finances and service delivery.

“Harare needs to be a sustainable City so that it can perform its mandate fully as enunciated in the Urban Councils Act: Chapter 29:15.”

Local Government and Public Works Minister July Moyo said there should be a seamless interaction between Central, provincial and local government always.
He said some city employees because of their inefficiencies are using the security system to safeguard their stay in employment.

Minister Moyo says he set up a team of local government experts to do an administrative audit of all urban councils looking at various service delivery mandates and the Local Government Board will soon be fully constituted in the next two weeks to look at the issue of appointments of senior council officials.