BULAWAYO mayor David Coltart has revealed that the year 2025 has been tough for the city which saw the local authority making slow progress in terms of service delivery.
In an interview with Southern Eye recently, Coltart said service delivery was greatly affected by the delay in the approval of the 2025 budget, coupled with empty promises for funding of key projects of the city and bureaucracy.
He said the city did not make much progress during the year.
“There are several projects that have not taken off namely the construction of Glass Block Dam, the Egodini project and other projects,” Coltart said.
“The only achievement we can acknowledge is that of cleaning the city which worked against all the odds.”
He said the city would continue the programme, adding that there were some improvements which were, however, not up to standard.
Coltart said there had been some improvements on the roads despite some promises the local authority got from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) which are yet to be fulfilled.
“We are still waiting for Zinara to honour its promise which they made to me during one of our meetings with the chief executive officer that they will upgrade the Gwanda to Victoria Falls Road, Khami Road and Matobos Road,” he said.
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“We have seen some progress on the 6th Avenue Extension which will be opened soon.”
Coltart said the major challenge the city faced was water shortage, noting that a water technical committee was set up by the Lands, Agriculture, Water, Fisheries and Rural Development ministry.
He identified a variety of issued that need attention including pumping of water from Ncema to Insiza Dam, the Mtshabezi pipeline and the upgrading of Tuli reservoir.
“Unfortunately, the funds that were promised by central government did not come. There has been the upgrading of Nyankuni pump station and Mzingwane that led to the improvement of water pumping from Ncema to criterion reservoir which resulted in the rescheduling of the water-shedding period from 130 hours to 96 hours,” he said.
Coltart said the construction of Glass Block Dam had been stalled by bureaucracy.
“As you know that a year ago, I had a very successful meeting with the African Investment Forum in Morocco,” he said adding that he got strong indications for financial support from Standard Bank in South Africa and the African Development Bank.
“Regrettably as I said the process has been affected by red tape. The construction company is ready to start work and it may take two or two and half years. The earliest we can expect water in the dam is 2028,” he said.
However, Coltart dismissed reports that there was a misunderstanding between his office and that of the town clerk.
“It was an issue raised by the general purposes committee which comprises the chairs of all council committees which acting on the minister of Local government Daniel Garwe’s advise wanted an issue to do with the extension of the town clerk’s term of office to be referred to the Attorney-General’s office,” he said.
“It was finally resolved in the special council meeting where we had the majority of the councillors and consequently the town clerk had his contract extended by one year. I want to express that there was no misunderstanding emanating from a resolution.”
Coltart said they expected quick approval of the 2026 budget so that they would hit the ground running.
“Our 2025 budget approval was delayed to up to April this year which severely affected our operations, we hope that this year we will not have that same challenge expecting that our budget will be approved expeditiously and commence work right at the beginning of the year,’’ he said.
According to Coltart, the city hopes to start on the Glass Block Dam and resume the Egodini project at the beginning of next year, adding that there were other key projects the city expected to embark on.
He said these included the implementation of the sanitation and maintenance of roads projects, and service delivery.
