Chitungwiza Municipality fails to implement recommendations of the land audit report Today, the 13th of July 2014 marks six months after the commissioning of the audit report on issues of land management and allocation in Chitungwiza town and Seke district by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing last year in November. The report was produced by a 23-member audit team chaired by Mr Ronald Chimowa from the parent ministry. The land audit report among other things found out that “the managerial architecture at Chitungwiza Municipality is very weak and it lacks basic inter-departmental coordination expected in big organization,” like the local authority, said the report. “Poor coordination between departments has exposed the Municipality to abuse by management, councillors, and employees at all levels. The public is manipulating council because there is no coordination. Town Clerk is not hands on as realized by his lack of control over the management and not made any effort to implement past audit recommendations leaving the municipality like a ship without a captain”, claims the report on page 7 of 30 under section 6.1.4. (e). The audit report recommended arrests and suspensions of implicated individuals and cooperatives, public awareness programmes on land allocation issues, spatial planning, environmental impact assessments, corporate governance improvements, proper management of cooperatives and relocation of all affected families. It could only make sense for the Municipality to start by addressing issues of an internal bearing and then after that focus on external dynamics. It is however, mind-boggling to note that the George Makunde-led administration ignored all recommendations of an internal nature and are determined to pursue some recommendations of an external nature. This will create a lot of challenges as the Municipality is not administratively geared to address some of the recommendations owing to its structural defects as explained in the report. If the local authority’s arguments of carrying out some radical endorsements in the report such as the resettlement of affected families, the same report should guide them in going through a self-introspection in terms of corporate governance matters raised in the report.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 09:22:56 +0000
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