CSPR lashes Solwezi council ‘failure’

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 11:28:44 +0000

THE Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) in North Western Province says it is concerned over resource utilisation by Solwezi Municipal Council.

CSPR provincial coordinator Haggai Nyambe told the Daily Nation in an interview that it is quite worrying to see that service delivery has suffered at the expense of personal emoluments.

Mr Nyambe said despite being one of the financially sound councils in the country, how the local authority utilises such resources leaves much to be desired, adding that the services the local authority is offering does not correlate with the revenue it collects from business houses.

‘’Look at the state of the main market, the place is quite dirty right now, we can just say it is breeding ground for diseases such as cholera and very soon we might have an outbreak of cholera, and we don’t know what the council is doing about it,’’ he said.

He charged that the local authority has lamentably failed to deliver quality services to the people in the district.

‘’Look at the roads in the district, township roads are in a deplorable state. Just at the road that leads to their own office, you can’t even be proud that you have a council around. And this is one of the richest councils that has been collecting huge sums of money from the mines and other business houses,’’ he said.

He said there was need to put up a monitoring mechanism that will ensure that there is proper utilisation of resources that the council collects.

‘’Otherwise we will continue talking day in day out as long as the council is not monitored vividly, they will continue doing what they feel like doing,’’ he said.

He has also called on the other stakeholders in the district to come up with a concerted effort and make sure that the council was closely monitored.

‘’They need to be put on their toes, we cannot continue paying land rates, business levies, when we can’t see any improvement in terms of service delivery,’’ he added.