…residents blame GCC for poor coms as only 9 people attend meeting
EDWIN MOYO
Gweru-Ward 5 Senga residents are up in arms against Gweru City Council for poor communication with regards to billing of rates in USD as only 9 residents attend consultative meeting.
Today’s meeting was attended by only 9 people in a ward with more than a 1000 households.
Information gathered by The Midweek Watch revealed that the meetings being conducted across the City’s 18 wards were meant to inform residents of the decision to index bills in USD and not consultative.
Speaking after the aborted meeting at Ingwe Hall, a resident who choose to remain anonymous said Council was holding residents at ransom.
“There is no meeting here because we never received proper communication although council is saying they sent notification on social media platforms, but how many people have access to that, what the elderly who can’t the advanced gadgets.
“Worse still the manual is written technical financial language and in English for that matter, which is very difficult to comprehend for an ordinary person,” he added.
A furious, Paul Mukwazhi said the timing of the Ward 5 meeting is bad as it was a Sunday, a church day for most people.
“Today is a Sunday and most people are at church and Council goes on to propose a meeting for a serious matter like that, are they serios or they just want to play games with residents,” said Muskwazhi.
He added that, the last meeting at the Gweru Theatre, they were told that the ward meetings will be consultative only for the council to make an about turn and turn the meetings into informative ones.
Ward 5 councillor, Mafa Kwanisai said it was important for residents to attend consultative meetings so that council makes effective decisions and he went on to propose that residents should come up with a date convenient to stakeholders.
Meanwhile, Gweru Council senior finance department official, Moses Moyo said it was important for residents to know that the approved budget was in USD hence the consultations were based on that.
