BULAWAYO City Council has said it will hold a second round of budget consultations following residents’ complaints that the recent meetings to discuss the 2014 financial plan for the local authority was not adequate.
RONALD MOYO/NQOBANI NDLOVU
Mayor Martin Moyo said follow-up meetings would be held on Saturday and Sunday after consultations held last week were poorly attended.
“It is regrettable that there were low attendances at consultations we held. You will know that we should have in fact, started consultations in July, but we were delayed by the elections,” he said.
“Some of the adverts we placed in the newspaper had wrong dates, but we will hold a second round of consultations on the 26th and 27th to get residents’ views in their respective wards.”
Moyo encouraged residents to attend the budget consultations in large numbers.
The Bulawayo Progressive Residents’ Association (BPRA) had on Friday called on the local authority to transform its budget consultation methods saying the current exercise cannot address needs of residents, which are peculiar to their suburbs.
BPRA said different suburbs require different needs hence the council’s budget consultation exercises have over the years failed “to address pertinent issues faced by residents in their different suburbs”.
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Emmanuel Ndlovu, the BPRA programmes and advocacy officer, said the residents’ body wants a radical shift towards ward-based dialogue consultations to ensure problems besetting residents in different suburbs are adequately addressed.
“BPRA believes that budgets should be crafted in line with the realities faced by the residents of Bulawayo. BPRA believes council’s budget consultations are failing in this regard, with the views of residents from different realities being lumped together leading to budgets that do not address pertinent issues affecting residents,” Ndlovu said.
“BPRA believes these are everyday issues and problems that can be addressed if the budget process is recalibrated to focus on ward issues and if views of residents from communities are actually considered in the formulation of the budget.”
Ndlovu added: “It is the association’s contention that the process is largely tokenistic, with the final determinations being arrived at by the local authority technocrats while the views of residents are largely discarded.”
Council began 2014 budget consultations early this month.
