TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO
Ten people this week attended the Bulawayo City Council (BCC)’s 2022 budget performance review meeting, signalling residents’ lack of confidence in the authority it blames for failing to listen to their concerns.
“The low turnout is a result of low confidence that the people now have towards BCC. In most cases they (BCC) impose policies without consulting the residents. The low turnout is a sign that the residents are losing confidence that they used to have with regards to BCC, “ Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association secretary for administration Thembelani Dube told Business Times.
Dube suggested that BCC decentralise the system of consulting the residents.
Some of these wards are too big and some residents are not prepared to travel long distances to a certain hall or meeting point,” he said.
Dube urged BCC to disseminate information on time for residents to prepare.
Commenting on the matter, BCC Chamber Secretary, Sikhangele Zhou, said the council sends messages through different platforms to alert the residents of any meeting.
“As Council, we should be guided by the residents on how we should send our messages where people can get the information.
The notice to the (budget review) meeting was announced on social media platforms such as Facebook, different WhatsApp groups and newspapers.
“The reason we have different groups is that we fear that when we combine all residents it will affect your contributions and participation so we wanted our focus to be specifically on informal traders,” she said.
Asked why BCC did not cancel the meeting when it was clear only 10 residents turned out for the meeting, Zhou said: “We were trying to respect people. We didn’t want to cancel the meeting when residents had left their busy schedules to attend the meeting. And the other problem is that we do not know the main reason other people did not attend.”
Bulawayo residents are not happy with the higher rate they are forced to pay following the approval by government of the city’s ZWL$23.8bn.
Last year, residents rejected the BCC proposed ZWL24.7bn budget resulting in the local authority slashing it by ZWL$900m.
