Councils blame poor service delivery on inflation

LOCAL authorities in the country have attributed their poor service delivery record to rising inflation.

Mayors Blessing Tandi (Mutare), Lovemore Maiko (Chitungwiza) and Angeline Kasiipo (Kwekwe) made the remarks during a virtual meeting on Wednesday organised by Shoko Festival.

Residents, the mayors said, should not expect miracles from them as they were being affected by the country’s poor economic performance.

Tandi said his council was struggling to provide good service delivery due to the country’s tanking economy.

“We don’t operate in a vacuum. If the national economy is not performing, why should you expect us to perform miracles when we have high inflation? We need a lot of money to buy water treatment chemicals,” Tandi said.

“Our roads are in a poor state because we are not getting enough funds from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration. As council, we should be allowed to collect money from vehicle licences.”

Maiko weighed in saying councils do not exist in isolation. He said they were also facing water challenges.

“As councils, we don’t live in isolation, with the current economy you should not expect miracles from us, like what Mutare mayor Blessing Tandi has already said, we are struggling to provide service delivery because of the poor state of the economy,” he said.

“Look at the rate at which inflation is going up, we also need to pay our workers competitively.”

“Chitungwiza was established as a dormitory town of Harare and now has the largest urban population but we don’t have any source of water. We rely on Harare for water distribution and it’s giving us a drop in the ocean,” he said.

Kasiipo also said they were failing to perform because of the moribund economy.

She, however, urged residents to pay their dues.

“We are urging our residents to pay rates, our collection rate is very low, so our residents need to play their part so that we provide good service delivery,” he said.