Generate own revenue, RDCs urged

THE government has urged rural district councils (RDCs) to find more ways of increasing revenue generation to improve service delivery instead of solely relying on rates.

Local Government and Public Works minister Winston Chitando made the call while addressing chief executive officers and chairpersons from 60 RDCs in Zimbabwe during an annual general meeting held in Bulawayo last week.

Chitando said local authorities should find more ways of revenue generation such as land evaluation to improve service delivery.

“It is very important for our local authorities to try and think outside the box so as to increase revenue generation,” Chitando said.

“Yes, we can increase rates to the extent to which we can leave the rest to ratepayers. We have councils which are sitting on lots of land and that land is idle which can be used more productively.

“We have councils that in some cases do not even populate things like beerhalls and other revenue generation activities and in some cases subcontract and abuse some of those lines of revenue. So, it is very important in your discussions to think and come up with suggestions as we move towards an upper-middle-income economy. We would want to have our councils in good financial state.”

Chitando said local authorities should be in good financial condition and be able to balance their accounts so that they are eligible to get funding from the government.

“The blueprint is essentially about four things. The first is finance, to say manage our income and expenditure, let’s manage our balance sheet. The president spoke about the evaluation of land when he spoke about the master plan to say, "let's balance our master plan as we improve service delivery,” he said.

“Each local authority should be bankable. We would want each and every local authority to be in a position for the government to facilitate short, medium and long term funding to improve service delivery.”