Harare City Council is technically dead

Most local authorities failed to meet the June 30 deadline to submit their development master plans after President Mnangagwa issued a directive to develop service delivery plans aligned to the blueprint “The Call to Action — No Compromise to Service Delivery”, which was launched in November last year. Our Political Editor KUDA BWITITI spoke to Local Government and Public Works Minister DANIEL GARWE on the master plans and other issues under his ministry.

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Q: What is the latest regarding local authorities’ submission of the master plans?

A: We had a deadline of June 30, 2024, and when it came, more than 85 percent of the councils submitted their master plans, 65 percent handed in their valuation rolls and about 70 percent submitted their enterprise resource planning systems. Some councils had valid reasons for failing to submit on time. We then agreed that the deadline for all of them is now July 30. So, we are expecting every local authority to have submitted everything by July 30. We have assurances that this time, they will all comply.

Q: What follows after submission of the master plans?

A: The draft master plans will undergo a 60-day public exhibition period, during which the public and other stakeholders can review, comment and raise objections in terms of the law. After that, we now come to the implementation stage of the master plans. Implementation is a long-term process. For example, if it’s Harare City, we will now know its boundaries in terms of development. This is where we start working with other ministries, like National Housing and Social Amenities, in terms of the Human Settlements Policy to build vertically, as opposed to single-storey buildings, because we do not have all the land that we require. As we bring investors to participate in housing delivery, we ensure that we enforce policy pronouncements, like 40 percent of all developable land must be set aside for multi-storey construction. In areas where we do not necessarily need to put up flats, we still focus on densification through construction of cluster houses.

Q: How long will the implementation phase take?

A: I do not want to give timelines because it is a long process, and all local authorities will have different programmes to implement.

Q: How will implementation of these master plans benefit ordinary citizens or ratepayers?

A: You may want to know that last month we were directed by His Excellency to issue a moratorium on the application of land for development. The reasons behind that are many. Firstly, we want to know the state of urban land that is under the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works and that which is under the various local authorities, both urban and rural.

Secondly, you are aware that there have been many developers whose applications for land for development of houses were positively processed. Some of them did not meet their requirements in terms of handing over common assistance to the Government. So, we want to track that and then bring back the land for onward beneficiation of civil servants and other citizens who fall in that social housing bracket.

Also, we have people who were given land and they did not do anything with it or are holding on to that land for speculative purposes. We want to recall that land. This concerns developers. It’s also concerning local authorities that were given the first pieces of land for development five or 10 years ago and they were not doing anything.

Others started selling illegally without planning; no layout plans. This is why we have Harare encircled with informal settlements. So, for us to be able to identify and come up with a comprehensive figure or document, we need to carry out an audit of urban State land, that which is under Government, local authorities or so-called developers.

Q: How will this audit tackle land barons?

A: A land baron is somebody who has given himself or herself State land. It could be land owned by the Central Government or local authorities. We want to keep out land barons at all costs because they have caused pain and suffering to innocent Zimbabweans. As we speak right now, we are working on revising the regulations and by-laws in all the local authorities so that the law then takes its course.

Q: What progress has been made by the Commission of Inquiry set up by President Mnangagwa to probe how the Harare City Council has been running its affairs since 2017?

A: The commission, led by Justice Maphios Cheda, is still conducting its business and I do not want to pre-empt its work because it is digging deep into the rot.

The commission started its work in May and was given six months to conclude its investigation. The aim is to bring sanity to the City of Harare.

What I can mention is that corruption is still taking place at the Harare City Council. Complaints continue to come from residents over the council’s failure to deliver services, like waste and sewer management, providing clean water and road maintenance. All these things are being investigated.

Reports that we are receiving daily speak volumes about how the local authority is being run. I can say that, for all technical purposes, the City of Harare is non-existent.

It is an institution that should support the Central Government in terms of providing local services to its residents, but it’s technically dead. This is why the President appointed the commission and we are all looking forward to seeing what comes out of this probe.

Q: Your ministry is involved in preparations for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit under the Public Works portfolio. Please update us on progress regarding the preparations.

A: Our ministry is only part of a bigger picture being supervised by the authorities above me. But I can mention some public works under our purview.

The construction of the Manyame Air Base Hospital is 80 percent complete. On the outstanding works, we are now doing the finishes and awaiting equipment that is being imported. But in terms of construction work, we are only left with the refurbishment of the existing hospital and the external works like tiling, ceiling tiles and flooring.

Coming to the new Parliament building, landscaping is work in progress. You can now see some green grass mushrooming up.

On the left side of the building, some concrete works are being done to manage slopes on the hill. Contractors are doing the concrete works and horizontal beams for laying D-blocks.

These D-blocks will hold the soil, and some grass is planted.

All that is going to be 100 percent complete by July 30. Car park works are also in progress, where surfacing is going to be done. Tarring will be done by July 30.

A specialist contractor was enlisted for the villas. At least 12 villas will be ready out of the 18.

Then after that, we embark on civil works, roadworks, landscaping, plants, flowers, the grass and so on.

From a public works perspective, those are some of the works we are supervising.

This was originally published here by the Sunday Mail.