Lack of petty cash hampers service delivery

THE Harare City Council (HCC) has disclosed that some of the challenges it is facing in the maintenance of roads were as a result of lack of petty cash to purchase minor items such as fuses and materials to mend tyre punctures.

As a result, the Environmental Management Committee sat on February 18, 2021 to set up a special interdepartmental taskforce to discuss the challenges.

It identified some of the challenges that have hampered service delivery in the city as unavailability of machinery and lack of petty cash.

Harare has been subjected to poor service delivery, with the local authority failing to provide potable water and rehabilitate roads as well as collect refuse.

The special taskforce is expected to look at the issue of insufficient budget allocation to fund road maintenance and deal with the frequent breakdown of key equipment such as graders, excavators, jetpatchers and plate compactors, as well as petty cash to procure minor items.

The director of works was tasked with identifying "root causes for the challenges" and proffer corrective actions and solutions.

"The committee discussed the matter and appreciated the strategy of the taskforce with regards to refuse collection. The taskforce had planned to progressively increase the current fleet of refuse compactors at a rate of one truck per week with the view to have 30 functional refuse compactors by end of the 100 days review period," the recent minutes of the Environmental Management Committee read.

Low morale among council workforce was also cited as one of the reasons why the city was not meeting its service delivery expectations.

But last week, Harare acting mayor Stewart Mtizwa told journalists during a Zimbabwe Union of Journalists media workshop on community reporting in Harare that salaries were now up to date and morale was high within the local authority.