'Councillors' behaviour eating away Zanu-PF's credibility'

ZANU PF supporters in Gwanda have expressed concerns at their councillors in the Municipality of Gwanda Chambers accusing them of destroying their party's credibility in the town.

Speaking through a complaint to Bulawayo24 news, the ZANU PF supporters in the town claim that the behaviour of their councillors and some decisions and resolutions they are making are destroying the trust and reputation of the ruling ZANU PF party.

The supporters claim that the residents of Gwanda are generally not happy about the way the councillors are conducting council business resulting in the residents throwing all the blame in the hands of ZANU PF calling on the party leadership in the District and Province to urgently intervene and bring the councillors to order.

"These councillors continuously make out of favour decisions in the town resulting in wide spread complaints about them and consequently about the party in general," says the statement sent through to Bulawayo24.

"Going to the elections ZANU PF had a clear manifesto of empowering the people but the councillors in Gwanda are doing the opposite of the manifesto by passing resolutions that do not empower the people," says the statement without elaboration.

The ruling ZANU PF party has seven councillors in the ten councillors chamber of the Municipality of Gwanda commanding a very comfortable majority. The Mayor and all committee chairpersons of council are all from ZANU PF while the opposition was not given an opportunity to chair even a single committee.

Municipality of Gwanda has since last year been hitting headlines for all the wrong reasons than good. Top amongst the sad developments from the town is an apparent picture of a council in serious financial crisis due to financial mismanagement which has forced the Minister of Local Government to send a probe team into the council.

The Municipality has also been found wanting by continuously having fights with local informal traders as the council immediately went into a "clean up exercise" of the informal traders as soon as it came into office. After the informal traders the, council stepped up to battle with long distance taxi operators closing off most of the strategic taxi ranks in the town centre and moving the taxis to the old Jahunda long distance bus terminus much to the ire of both commuters and the business people in the central business district.

In the latest shock move, council passed a resolution to evict a number of the town's senior residents from council rented houses at the old Jahunda Township which appears to have seriously angered the party's supporters as it came out that the majority of those being evicted from the houses were members of the opposition party. Residents complained bitterly of the evictions which they claimed were politically motivated. One senior ZANU PF supporter interviewed by local media accused the councillors for showing signs of political immaturity by clearly evicting only known members of the opposition parties while giving ZANU PF supporters ownership of the houses.

"This is a serious case of political immaturity by the councillors. You don't do things and make them so obvious for everyone to see," said the supporter.

"What they are doing creates a direct confrontation for them against the people they are supposed to be leading. They should always show impartiality when exercising their duties as councillors in order to win more people to the party for next election not this way," added the supporter.

In the statement sent to Bulawayo24 the supporters called on the leadership of ZANU PF to quickly intervene into the issues of Gwanda Council by calling on the Minister of Local Government to use his authority to bring the councillors into order.

"There are rumours of insults and near fist fights amongst our councillors at the chambers and allegations of disrespecting of the mayor by fellow councillors and these are not good news to come from council which the party must force the Minister to investigate," reads the statements.

There has been reports of bad blood between the ZANU PF councillors in the Municipality of Gwanda with claims that the council is now torn into two factions one for the mayor and another against the mayor. Some councillors have also been accused of carrying out projects in the town without council approval and resolutions in direct disregard of council authority.