Mayor spells out city’s 2019 vision
HARARE mayor Councillor Herbert Gomba says Harare City Council will take advantage of the harmonious relationship it had with Government last year to improve service delivery this year.
Reviewing last year’s performance and outlining plans for 2019, Cllr Gomba said the year 2018 was filled with challenges and opportunities.
“We are grateful because we worked with the Government in developing our structures and on service delivery in 2018,” he said.
“The challenges we faced had to do with access to critical resources for use in our service delivery mandate. This includes shortages of foreign currency to procure critical equipment such as compactors, fuel, chemicals and spare parts.
“Other challenges were to do with reduction in revenue due to problems faced by ratepayers and the Zimra debt which is suffocating council.
“On opportunities, several corporates came forward to assist and create synergies with us. Econet wants to transform First Street into a world class street and NetOne came through with its own proposals and Cassava indicated that it was keen on creating business entities with council.”
He said council implemented its 100-Day Plan under which various infrastructure projects were carried out. These were on roads, libraries and clinics.
“Last year we made our top managers sign performance contracts to ensure they deliver according to those contracts. Going forward, more changes are going to be implemented and this will see many council employees being forced to perform,” Cllr Gomba said.
“We are planning to announce the next phase of 100-Day Plan. We are looking at transforming our human resources into a viable entity that delivers service to our people, that means dealing with numerous cartels formed in traffic police, realign the force into a municipal police that controls and enforces by-laws through retraining.
He said this year, revenue collection will be prioritised.
“We want to create a loose agency which will meet every week to review progress on targets set and the enforcement of the law. We also want to push for an improvement on the payment of bills and this can only be achieved if we deliver quality service to our clients.
“Our focus this year is on service delivery. Therefore, we will not tolerate non-performing workers.
“They will be fired. We will be requesting each division to submit a list of non-performers, such as those who just register their attendance and leave to do personal or union business at the expense of council work.”