Chamisa’s Agenda 2020 address to the nation

3. Local Authorities Agenda

Those who meddle in the game of propaganda want to tell you that service delivery is failing because of the MDC. They want you to believe that every problem under the sun belongs to us because they have failed.

We are going to launch the smart cities policy document that will focus on how we govern differently detailingissues to the local authority’s service delivery, infrastructure, the vision of the city.

We are also going to launch the smart villages policy that will entail our model smart homesteads smart sources of energy solar for each rural home borehole per village infrastructure for villages, schools, bridges, etc.

We are also going the emphasize on proper and true devolution, and a people-centered devolution bill in line with the spirit in the constitution.

We continue to work under sabotage. The Ministry of Local Government still appoints all town clerks, CEOs and other officials. This means they continue to sabotage our efforts for change. Government still approves and limits our budgets. We are not able to determine rates leaving us unable to make enough money to provide adequate services. We are also not exempt from very real consequences of the prevailing economic environment where sourcing forex for goods and services such as water chemicals and road equipment etc. is difficult and dependent on the charity of the Ministry of Finance. The system is broken.

Despite that we will make a greater effort in professionalising service delivery and community development.

We will work to remove the bottlenecks compromising service delivery, in particular:

• Giving procurement to local authorities as opposed to local government.
• Moving joint ventures powers back to council and away from central government.
• Removing the approval of the budget from central government in particular the local authority and residents.
• Stopping unconstitutional ministerial directives and political interference from central government.
• Removing hiring and firing of senior employees or staff in local authorities from the local government.

We will take a no nonsense approach to dealing with integrity, excellence and accountability to cleanse our leadership against corruption and incompetence in the zones we lead.

I am awaiting verified feedback from the Integrity and Accountability Panel, led by Advocate Thabani Mpofu.

This panel’s work is to position our councils according to expected and acceptable standards of excellence.

The corrupt will be identified and removed from office.

2020 will not be an ordinary year. It will be a year of action. Collective action.

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