eBusiness Weekly
Enacy Mapakame
Businesses are domiciled in local authorities’ jurisdiction and they depend heavily on them for such services as refuse management, clean water reticulation, access roads, health facilities and licensing among others.
However, poor corporate governance has become rooted in these local authorities as they deliberately ignore the Office of the Auditor General’s recommendations, further worsening service delivery and corrupt activities.
A survey spearheaded by civil society organisations (CSOs) revealed little effort by local authorities to implement recommendations made by the Auditor General after revealing cases of abuse of public funds.
Gross mismanagement of funds and nepotism were also cited leading, to poor service delivery as the local authorities became breeding grounds for corruption.
“The abuse of public funds has become rampant in local authorities with tender-preneurship, economies of affection, nepotism, and partisan politics complimenting to militate against optimum efficiency of government thereby undermining service delivery. This governance miscarriage has aggravated the cost of living.
“Ironically, local authorities have failed to adhere, and implement the recommendations prescribed by the Auditor-General,” said Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) executive director Janet Zhou, while presenting some of the findings of the survey.
ZIMCODD undertook a tracking survey of the Auditor-General`s recommendations with the main aim of unearthing the challenges that local authorities were facing in implementing those recommendations that will help them to improve the management of public funds and service delivery in general.
According to the survey, many local authorities are failing to implement the Auditor-General’s recommendations for various reasons such as political interference, incapacitation and general apathy among others.
Most public officials who participated said there was too much Government and political interference which hindered their operations.
In Masvingo Province for instance, out of the seven local authorities surveyed, five had implemented less than 50 percent of the recommendations while about 67 percent of the recommendations were not implemented in the Midlands Province.
In Manicaland Province, only 33 percent of recommendations were implemented by Mutare City Council.
“Given the vitality of quality public service delivery to the majority of low-income Zimbabweans, ZIMCODD implores the government through the responsible ministries to disburse devolution funds on a timely basis to allow local authorities to fully utilize these funds before their value is eroded by inflation. This is critical in expanding the fiscal space for local authorities,” said Zhou.
Furthermore, Zhou noted the need for capacity building of management and staff at local authorities to adequately prepare them for full compliance with Auditor-General findings especially in adhering to International Public Accounting Standards, internal auditing, risk management, and revenue collection, recovery, and management.
