Gweru City Council is set to automatise its operations, moving away from the manual system in use for decades, as the local authority seeks to establish more effective ways to improve its business performance, a senior council official has said.
By Stephen Chadenga
Town clerk, Elizabeth Gwatipedza said council has to adopt either the systems, applications and products implementation (SAP) or smart response technology (SRT) computer programmes as it migrates from non-automated operations.
She said using the manual system was not only archaic, but brought problems of accountability and transparency in business operations.
“Next week we will be engaging service providers to make presentations and I have since tasked each head of department to come up with a list of areas where they feel we need to computerise,” Gwatipedza told journalists at a press briefing yesterday.
“Most of the activities here are being done manually and we have departments being run without even a single computer and such operations can breed corruption.”
Gwatipedza said the automation process was in line with the government’s requirement to link the systems operations of local authorities with that of the Finance ministry.
Meanwhile, the government has approved council’s standstill budget of $41 million for this year.
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Gwatipedza said the budget was approved mid-last month and among conditions for the approval was the need to address the huge salaries bill, which the of Local Government ministry said was not sustainable.
Currently, workers gobble over $700 000 in net salaries and a total of $1,3 million goes to the wage bill at a time council generates an average $1,5 million revenue per month.
“The wage bill is not sustainable, either we raise revenue or we find strategies to rationalise the salaries,” she said.
