Zimbabwe Parliament- What they said about the Belarus fire tender deal- Part 2

We want to know, do you have minutes because we do not want you to tell us things which are not written down which you are just making up. In finishing this, this issue at the end of the day is a burden on Government but because somebody got into this deal – we have got South Africa and other countries and there are other local authorities that have those fire tenders. The service delivery of the people is more important. People do not have water or health facilities and you are giving them fire tenders, what is more important?

The local authorities must determine their service delivery needs and not Central Government. Government gives the 5% and all it must do is to monitor and evaluate that 5%.

HON PORUSINGAZI: My question to the Hon Minister is that the fire tenders she is talking about – are they all the same like a one-size-fits-all approach or you have considered the different needs of the councils? For example Chipinge Rural District Council, can it take a fire tender which is similar to Harare and Bulawayo? Did you also look at the capacity for making the repayments? From the resources that they have in Chipinge, can they match the capacity to pay back compared to Harare? Why did you not consider the different sizes of the towns, a small town getting a smaller vehicle? There is no need to have a fire tender with an 80- metre boom in some of these small towns which have no high rise buildings.

Lastly I also want to find out, the challenge that we have from the things that we import is that of spares. Are these fire tenders coming with the requisite spares which will enable us to service the vehicles? If people are trained to service these and the spare parts are not available, it is a challenge. I also want to know when these fire tenders will come through. In other towns they are experiencing a lot of fires, so I want to find out when these fire tenders will be coming through. I thank you.

HON. M. CHOMBO:  Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir for giving me the opportunity to make clarifications on some of the issues that were raised by the Hon. Members. First and foremost, I just want to reiterate that Zimbabwe is a unitary state and with three tiers of Government as you have mentioned, which are Central Government, Provincial and Local Authorities and the subsidiary law takes effect whereby the local authority is supposed to implement the programmes and policies of Government.

The request was from local authorities through their Chief of Fire whom we had meetings with – [AN HON MEMBER: She’s is lying].

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Hon Member on my left, she was listening while you were talking. Give her the opportunity to respond. Hon. Members, I do not enjoy your noise in this House, do not force me to send you out of the House.

HON. CHOMBO: The request for the agreement, we are going to look into it and request a day when we can present it to Parliament as per request. One Hon. Member raised the issue that we do not have the Devolution Act yet, but as I said yesterday it is within the Attorney General’s Office and as soon as it is finished it is going to be presented to Parliament.

The request for the fire tenders as I said was made through the fire officers and we have a list of the responses from the local authorities which you can also present to Parliament. You talked about the Procurement Act to say where there is a bilateral agreement that does not apply.

The designs and specifications were given by the chief fire officers.

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