Source: The Chronicle – Breaking news
Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu ,sukulwenkosi.dube@chronicle.co.zw
GWANDA Municipality in Matabeleland South is seeking to acquire more land to facilitate the town’s expansion and implementation of several development projects in the mining town while improving service delivery.
The interventions are part of responses to President Mnangagwa’s “A call to action no compromise to service delivery” blue-print, which was launched late last year with the view to modernise the operations of local authorities towards meeting 2030 vision ideals.As part of the drive, local authorities are expected to have developed masterplans by the end of this month.
In an interview, Gwanda mayor, Councillor Thulani Moyo, said the town has run out of expansion land hence the development of a master plan was at an advanced stage with almost all the processes completed.“We successfully held extensive consultation meetings and a report has been produced. The consultation meetings were done in all wards and they also incorporated various population groups such as women, youths, Government departments, business community, the elderly, people with disability, among others, as we work towards coming up with the final masterplan,” he said.
“Our consultation process was also done online. The deadline for submitting the masterplan is 30 June and we are confident that we will meet it.
“As part of the efforts to respond to the call to action, we are working on expanding the town through acquiring more land for development purposes,” said Clr Moyo.
“As a municipality, we have run out of land and if we are to improve on service delivery, we will need more land.”
Clr Moyo said major issues that will be tackled once more land has been acquired include issuing out residential stands in order to clear the housing waiting list, which is now at 25 000, expanding the industrial area, construction of schools, establishment of malls, innovation centre, recreational facilities, community halls, construction of hotels, housing for Government workers, vending markets, construction of clinics, state-of-the-art stadium, among others.
Clr Moyo said once the land is available, council will engage various partners for development purposes.He extended his gratitude to all stakeholders that participated in development of the masterplan.He said the input of stakeholders was critical in ensuring that the municipality improves on service delivery.
According to the blueprint, the quality of service provision by local authorities should be in line with a standard upper middle income economy.An urgent and immediate requirement is for local authorities to achieve acceptable service delivery levels and observe all applicable laws.
Every local authority should from an organisational, systems and physical planning perspective, be in a state to develop a road map towards a 2030 vision status. Government will come up with minimum service delivery levels to be achieved by all local authorities.Under the “Call to Action”, local authorities are expected to address key areas of concern such as compliance with applicable laws, leasing and selling of land by local authorities in servitudes, leasing and selling of communal and agriculture land by local authorities and valuation of properties for rating purposes.
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