The Ministry of Local Government and housing will next year start assessing the sustainability of councils with a view to come up with solutions to the numerous challenges being face including payment of salaries.
Local Government and Housing Minister Emerine Kabanshi disclosed this in an interview with ZANIS in Lusaka today.
She said the move has been necessitated by some councils failure to meet their obligations especially payment of salaries to workers.
Ms Kabanshi disclosed that some Councils’ failure to pay salaries to workers in division four despite government having taken up the responsibility of paying officers falling in divisions one to three is purely as a result of lack of innovation on their part.
She said there is no justification as to why Councils should fail to pay only a section of workers when government had lightened their burden of salary payments.
Ms Kabanshi said her Ministry is currently developing a tool that will be used in assessing the councils.
“This problem of Councils has been there for a long time, so to solve these problems needs an assessment and currently we are developing a tool to use in the assessment,” she said.
The Minister said taking one approach of bailing out the councils is not the best solution because different councils require different interventions.
She said in some cases, the Minister will have to build the human resource capacity to perform while other councils will just need to be more innovative in order to raise enough revenue than what they are collecting presently.
“A lot of councils have potential but they just lack innovation, so we will solve these problems depending on the findings, if it is a human resource problems, then we will need to get people that will make the council tick,” she said.
The Minister was reacting to some councils failure to pay salaries for workers in division four.
The Ministry of Local Government has taken up the burden of paying salaries for management and administrative staff only in councils.
ZANIS
YOU PF F.OOLS YOU END UP ASSESSING USING TAXPAYERS MONEY YOU WILL ENDUP IN CELLS WATCH YOURSELF.
Local government was run by PF during MMD’s government.
Naililwa nshaye… Mama katondo kalabwatabwata mwabene..
Madam Kabanshi.It is a well known fact that the severely shrunken revenue base is the reason why councils are under-performing.Local authorities have too many responsibilities under the Act compared to funding.Successive Local Government(Amendment/repeal )Acts have left them unable to engage in viable businesses. Central government agencies and departments like commercial water & sewerage companies.ZRA and NRDA have eaten into their sources of revenue.Government also stifles innovation by banning/rejecting revenue generating ideas like livestock levy.And now because they pay peanuts,they no longer attract many professionals.
Perhaps your Assessment Tools should start from here
And yet you keep on creating districts which can not sustain themselves. Chimbwi no plan zoona.
If employees can go months without salaries, Who pays cadres/councilors K700 monthly kanshi?
reintroduce the grain levy or watever it used to be called! What innovation are u talking about madam when u have scraped the grain levy which was a good source of income for councils??? Shaaaa!!!!!!!