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Cash strapped council seeks 15bn from Gono
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
Extracted from The Resident, Issue 39
August 12, 2004

Harare City Council held a "full" council meeting at Townhouse on Thursday 29 July 2004. CHRA condemns the mockery of these meetings given the dismissal of our Executive Mayor and 19 (out of 45) councillors.

The Herald (31 July 2004) reports that the City has applied for an extra 15bn from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to add to the 10bn grant that it received from Central Government to repair the ailing water reticulation system in the city.

Justifying the application, Harare City Council Town Clerk, Mr. Nomutsa Chideya was quoted as stating that the City's financial audit was nearing completion. The loan is accessible on condition that Harare City Council provides the RBZ with audited accounts. The Town Clerk mentioned that the accounts for 2001 are almost complete, whilst those for 2002 will be completed by October 2004 and those for 2003 by December 2004. Audits for 2004 should be completed by June 2005.

The Resident asks you to mark the dates, because the same statement was made by the city council's Public Relations office early in the year when prompted by the media. Residents will not acquiesce to cheap talk and no action, especially where the lives and health of close to three million Zimbabweans are at stake.

The Resident also notes that Council might not be eligible for the loan facility because its audit will spill over the deadline that was set by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. However, should the loan be approved, council will be able to carry out projects on the water treatment plant, in particular the rehabilitation of filters, work on the Number 1 works chemical dosing plant, clarifiers and refurbishment of valves. In total, the rehabilitation will yield an extra 70 megalitres of water into the supply chain. This is very different from the 200 odd megalitres that Harare needs on top of approximately 500 megalitres that are being pumped out to residents in Harare and beyond.

Many questions arise from the efforts being made by council. Should the loan be approved, what rate shall be used for the repayment of the loan? Residents will be keen to learn where council proposes to get the money to repay the loan, and whether there is conscious effort to find an alternative water source for the city.

In a related matter, the city has proposed to bill illegal structures in a bid to raise revenue. (The Herald - 02 August 2004) Illegal structures dotted round the city have posed a lot of dangers to residents, and many residents have called upon the City Council to regulate the construction of such structures to maintain health and safety standards in the community.

Councillor Trymore Magamu of Ward 3 expressed the same point at the full council meeting held last week. He felt that "the issue ought to be handled properly because it seems to me that we are regularising these structures when yet we all agreed that they are illegal structures." Councillor Magamu's argument was lost to the majority of councillors who felt that there was need for council to charge tariffs on the people operating these structures in order to prevent them from benefiting at the expense of other law abiding residents.

The effect of the regularisation of such structures remains to be seen. The Resident can only predict doom on a practice that has seen smaller towns and cities deteriorate in standards of hygiene.

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