Bulawayo residents have launched a petition to push the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to improve service delivery.
The petition is targeting to garner about 5 000 signatures and will then be handed over to the Town Clerk Christopher Dube.
In an interview with CITE, one of the residents spearheading the petition, Lungile Ngwenya said the petition came about after residents noted a decline in quality service delivery.
“Mainly it’s the increasing and continued observable fall in service delivery to the City. By writing this petition we are not attacking the City Council for poor service delivery which they may sensibly blame on the general prevailing economic hardship that the whole country is going through,” he said.
“We are instead asking for accountability, for proof that it is indeed not misuse of funds and resources that has gotten us to this extremely bad situation that we find ourselves in as a city.”
Ngwenya said in their submission there is a growing belief that council management are misusing funds and resources resulting in the worsening of poor service delivery.
“This is not a fight against the council, it’s an ask for what is due only. Anyone signing the petition will be signing as an independent individual resident of Bulawayo. What organisation they belong to or do not belong is not in any way related to this petition.”
He said they are a group of independent Bulawayo residents whose only concern is transparency in the way allocation and use of resources.
Ngwenya added that the petition won’t be not a once off thing but will culminate in the creation of a council monitoring system.
“The current accountability of running the City relies on office holders being morally upright but, in this day and age that is no longer the case, instead we want to a system in place regardless of who is in office.
Another representative, Mzimkhulu Mguni said the drive to come up with the petition was after a realisation that residents are being short-changed when it comes to service delivery.
“We don’t have schools that cater for special needs, we don’t have youth centres that are youth-friendly, we do not have roads that are user friendly, we don’t have a sewer system that is functioning well and at the same time we do not have water in the City,” said Mguni.
