Abel Ndooka
Latwell Nyangu
GOVERNMENT has revealed that some local authorities are still trapped in the analogue era where they are using pen and paper and files for documentation.
Minister of Local Government and Public Works, Daniel Garwe, revealed this when he spoke to the media in a session organised by the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Dr Jenfan Muswere, in Harare yesterday.
“Some of our local authorities are still using pen and paper and files to manage themselves in this digital era.
“The President said let’s move with the times and outdo the use of old technologies.
“He urged the buying and installing of the current softwares so that we run our authorities efficiently. Right now, we have two million people on the waiting list aggregated for housing but there is no single authority that can put all that information into a software so that people can access information digitally.
“Wherever you are, you should access your position on the waiting list or, if you are looking for accommodation, you just go online and access everything.
“This is the Vision 2030, we started it last year and the local authorities are now on course.”
He added:
“We are now at 75 percent in terms of success rate on this and we are at 65 percent in terms of evaluation roles.
“The Government came up with a production of Master Plans of which 99 percent of the local authorities have submitted those masterplans and they are on display for the public to scrutinise.
“There are also evaluation roles which are referred to as assets, buildings owned by local authorities.
“The majority of these local authorities were not taking care of these assets and sadly the local authorities had no inventory of what they have, especially in some suburbs.
“We have now told them that they should update all their evaluation roles, they must be aware, on a yearly basis, of what they have.
“These assets have a lot of economic value, nobody was sitting to have an audit of what local authorities have.”
Minister Garwe said, there were some instances in which some houses were being sold due to absenteeism only to discover that some of these houses belonged to local authorities. Minister Garwe also spoke about regularising the local authorities.
“We have no choice, we need to regularise all the informal settlements if we are to achieve an upper middle-class economy by 2030.
“We need to make conscious decisions and please stop buying land from barons and criminals, that’s the first step of regularisation.
“We have now put a budget in some areas so that we put some developers and we want the residents to participate.”
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