Ward 17 holds service delivery meeting

20 May, 2022 - 00:05 0 Views

Suburban

WARD 17 will on Saturday May 21, 2022 hold a service delivery meeting to discuss issues affecting suburbs in the ward, and residents have welcomed the opportunity to air their concerns to City of Harare officials.

Suburban Reporter 

The meeting scheduled for 1000 hours at Kingdom People’s Church at Number 111 The Chase in Mt Pleasant between Tudley Road and Quorn Avenue opposite Bond shopping centre will among other issues discuss water supplies, refuse collection, roads, street lighting, development control, health and finance.

Ward 17 Councillor Jacob Mafume invited residents to the meeting in a letter sent out to residents’ social media groups and residents welcomed the move saying they cannot miss the chance to formally lodge their concerns with the local authority. 

Councillor Mafume is expected to be accompanied by City of Harare officials from the departments of water, health, roads, development control, waste management and finance who will be responding to residents’ concerns.

A number of other wards have held similar meeting in the past two weeks with Ward 41 Marlborough and Ward 23 Waterfalls organising service delivery meetings where at least two representatives from each of the suburbs under the wards attended the meeting on behalf of fellow ratepayers.

For Ward 17, which covers Mt Pleasant, Groombridge, Vainona, Pomona, Borrowdale West, Mt Pleasant Heights, Arundel and Northwood, the meeting comes at a time when residents have been planning the formation of a residents’ association or residents’ trust to deal with service delivery issues.

Of late Ward 17 residents have been pushing the formation of residents’ trust or association to help lobby for service delivery in the ward in the face of lack of services from the terribly struggling City of Harare.

Most residents in Mt Pleasant, Arundel, Northwood, Vainona and parts of Pomona have not been receiving council tap water for more than a decade or close to two decades in some cases. 

Of late, the residents have been bitterly complaining about the City of Harare’s failure to collect refuse yet they pay their dues every month to council. 

Some have resorted to hiring g private companies to collect their garbage in the wake of the failure by council to offer the service.

Residents have also been for calling for decentralisation under which Ward 17 should retain a percentage of the rates and service charges paid by residents for exclusive use in the ward.

A few years ago, the City of Harare introduced the ward retention scheme under which wards were supposed to retain at least 25 percent of the revenue generated in that ward through rates and service charge payments. 

The money will be allocated for service delivery and developmental projects in the wards with the residents, councillors and the municipality cooperating on coming up with priority service delivery issues or development projects needing funding.

Residents noted that although the decentralisation blueprint was already on paper awaiting implementation, they first needed to form and register a residents’ association or trust.

 Examples were given of how fellow residents in Avondale and Borrowdale had successfully taken a similar route of forming associations and were deriving some benefits from working as a united force.

 A committee of volunteers from each section or suburb of Ward 17 was tasked with spearheading the formation of the residents’ trust or association. 

A constitution of the Borrowdale Ratepayers and Residents Association was provided to guide the residents in formulating their own trust or association.

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