|
Back to Index
City of Harare 2012 Budget consultations a cause for concern
Combined Harare
Residents Association (CHRA)
August 23, 2011
Combined Harare Residents Association is conveying its disappointment
in the manner in which the City of Harare has is conducting its
annual budget consultations. C.O.H has failed to timeously advertise
the meetings most of which have been set for the 27th of August.
Failure to publicize these meetings clearly exposes the City of
Harare that they are not committed to engaging public views on their
income and expenditure estimates for the year 2012. We demand that
C.O.H reconvenes all meetings that were done without proper publicity
to the residents and that Councilors first equip residents with
information on how the 2011 finances were expended before going
into the 2012 budget. Any meeting with an attendance of less than
50 people should be adjourned and more people invited to participate.
However, the Association would like to remind Harare residents to
take note of the following points during the 2012 budget consultations;
- Senior Council
officials are being paid hefty salaries at the expense of service
delivery
- There are
currently 650 ghost workers on the City of Harare payroll.
- City of Harare
is now charging an administration fee to the tune of $20 without
even consulting residents.
- There has
been no audit made public, accounting for the monies paid to the
local authority.
- No adherence
has been made to the regionally accepted ratio of 30:70 with more
money being channeled towards service delivery.
- City of Harare
is threatening to attach property of residents with outstanding
bills, some of which accumulated at a time when there were no
services being provided. (No services no payment!)
- The budget
should be responsive to the local needs of the community deviating
from the traditional blanket approach.
We urge City
of Harare not to go armed with figures only for these consultations,
but commit themselves to come up with residents' priorities
which will be costed thereafter in consultation with residents.
Considering that Council received a loan from China to upgrade water
services, there has to be a reduction of service charges in the
budget. We don't expect the C.O.H to wholly rely on residents'
hard earned money for its operation but also engage in some other
innovative income generating projects. Further, we continue to call
for the constitutionalisation of local Governance enabling local
Authorities to receive direct funds from treasury.
Visit the CHRA
fact
sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
