Chitungwiza Town Council should put its house in order. Employees in the beleaguered and graft-ridden city have not been paid since last November. They were last week given only $100 each.
Landscape by Tangai Chipangura
The entire workers’ union has been sent home for agitating for the payment of salaries through job action and municipality workers say any sign of disgruntlement now results in instant dismissal.
The man in charge of this state of affairs is George Makunde, brought in from Kariba by Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo, ostensibly to bring sanity to the city which had, under the Godfrey Tanyanyiwa and later Fungai Mbetsa administration, literally gone to the dogs.
I talked to workers last week and they say Tanyanyiwa and Mbetsa were better: “At least they gave us something to show for our labour. Since this man (Makunde) came in six months ago, we have been paid for only one month!
“It’s like we are slaves because we are not allowed to complain, and if one does not turn up for work because they have no money for transport, they are fired on the spot!”
The local authority is said to be mooting massive retrenchment, but it is caught between a rock and a hard place. The council has failed to sustain its huge salary bill, but an attempt at retrenchment would leave it in worse financial ruin.
The truth of the matter — the source of this problem — is that Chitungwiza has stood out like a sore thumb in terms of corruption and mismanagement.
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The council composed almost entirely of elected, but disgraced MDC-T city fathers, embarrassed Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party with naked graft, forcing the party to suspend the whole provincial executive.
Chombo, apparently out of spite, has refused to heed the MDC-T recommendation to fire the whole lot. So, the town’s affairs remain in the hands of the same city fathers who were disowned by their party for graft, including corruptly amassing stands.
Now, while its workers are forced to work without pay, Chitungwiza has remained known for its perpetually broken sewer system and the attendant acrid smell that pervades this sprawling town of at least 2 million.
Needless to say, proper service delivery cannot be expected from disgruntled workers who are finding it difficult to survive, feed their families or to buy soap in order to bathe before going to work!
Makunde and his managers have apparently failed to deal with the issue and he has been running up and down to Chombo’s office seeking a solution, but apparently finding none.
But it is not as if Chombo has not been aware of the simmering trouble in Chitungwiza. The minister knows the root cause of the problems at Chitungwiza but somehow, he has waited until too late to take action.
His stance in defence of previous rotten administrators and city fathers is well documented and really, given his penchant for personally running local authorities, the mess at Chitungwiza is Chombo’s baby.
Currently, Chombo is frothing at the mouth demanding the appointment of his own choices in strategic offices at Mutare and Gwanda which has been his modus operandi everywhere else until cities such as Chitungwiza go down on their knees. After that, he doesn’t want to be associated with the attendant problems.
When, as he did in Chitungwiza after the Tanyanyiwa scandal, he is dragged to act, the minister curiously does so by bringing in commissions which he authorises to suck more blood out of the comatose municipalities.
Given, the developments at Chitungwiza, it becomes growingly evident local government needs better management than has existed, curiously unchanged at central government for decades. Has service delivery in our cities and towns improved at all under the stewardship of Ignatius Chombo?
The minister cannot fool anyone by trying to blame MDC-T councillors because he literally runs the local authorities personally – which is why he finds it quite fine to shamelessly interfere in the running of even little towns like Gwanda, demanding the appointment of certain individuals of his own choice. [email protected]
