Councils urged to come up with realistic budgets
By Dumisani Ndlovu
Acting Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works, Emmanuel Ngwarati has urged City Councils to ensure that the 2023 financial year budgets addresse matters of public interest.
Speaking on the side lines of the proposed 2023 budgets approval process meeting in Gweru, Ngwarati said local authorities must come up with people centred budgets.
“We looked into their budget submissions and made our recommendations. We really want to emphasise on the universal strategies, vision 2030 and National Development Strategy. We need to align that with such so that we achieve our goals. We also want to be in line with the current budget setting by the Ministry of finance,” he said.
Acting secretary, Ngwarati said they noted a number of areas of deficiencies in terms of revenue collection.
“We noted some deficiencies in revenue collection. Some of them are over ambitious. There is need to come up with realistic budgets so that we achieve vision 2030.We also expect efficiency by council in terms of billing. We expect every council to efficiently bill its clients so that rate payers are not overburdened by overcharging and made to pay exorbitant rates,” he said.
He said that before councils leave budget approval process meetings, the ministry will make sure they come up with standard billing system so that they won’t continue short-changing ratepayers.
“It’s only a formula which was not applied consistently throughout the council system. We will make sure before they leave, we come up with a standard billing. And also on the method of billing we are working on a software which will also be applied throughout the country. A local authority application system,” said Ngwarati.
He also reiterated that they are standardising the revenue collection system so that they come up with maximum revenue collection.
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