CHITUNGWIZA - Town clerk, Godfrey Tanyanyiwa, has rendered the Chitungwiza municipality redundant and ineffective due to gross mismanagement and rampant corruption, it has emerged. (Pictured: Children play among the mounds of uncollected rubbish)
In a full council meeting last Thursday, it emerged that the Chitungwiza municipality manpower budget for 2010 caters for 2400 workers but only 1000 workers are employed at the moment. Garbage and uncollected refuse are piling up, giving rise to an unpleasant smell in all the streets and alleys in Chitungwiza. Despite succumbing to a devastating cholera outbreak in September 2008, most residents are afraid a more powerful and dangerous outbreak could occur anytime given the fact that raw sewage is flowing into people’s yards and the pipes continue to burst with no one to repair them.
Municipal workers have gone for nearly six months without getting paid, and despite having in place a budget that caters for 2400 workers, Tanyanyiwa ordered 800 workers to go on forced leave on full pay before retaining only 100 workers with strong Zanu (PF) connections at the instigation of Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo, and Harare Metropolitan governor, David Karimanzira. In the council meeting, to everyone’s surprise, Tanyanyiwa produced letters of dismissal to the workers who were on forced leave.
“We are failing dismally on service delivery: tall grass is an eyesore along all the roads and poses danger to both motorists and pedestrians, drains are blocked and sewage is overflowing because there is shortage of manpower to do the work. Where then is the logic to fire people and where will the money supposed to pay the other 1400 workers go if you reach such a decision before the 2010 budget has been utilised?” queried a councillor in the meeting on Thursday who can not be named for security reasons. Tanyanyiwa said he was only working on orders from above, referring to Chombo.
This is not the first time Chombo has meddled in the affairs of the Chitungwiza municipality. During the run up to the June 2008 presidential elections that forced elected MDC-T councillors into hiding for fear of losing their lives, Chombo appointed a caretaker council led by Darlington Nota, a Zanu (PF) functionary. The caretaker council is overstaffed with relatives of the top management most of whom did not have relevant qualifications or the zeal to do the work because of their powerful connections. Tractors and lorries for collecting garbage broke down because most of them had their tyres stolen and no one bothered to replace the parts or buy diesel for garbage collection in the residential areas.
At one point, due to irregularities in recruitment in the council, the local government board was called in. It demanded grade rationalisation which the council is ignoring at the instigation of the town clerk. A full council resolution ordered the suspension of Town Planner Dembetembe only to be unilaterally reinstated by the town clerk Tanyanyiwa.
Post published in: News