The City of Bulawayo has launched a Citizen Engagement Scorecard that will allow residents to assess service delivery and provide feedback to help identify areas requiring improvement.
The platform was launched by the city in partnership with the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works at the Small City Hall on Wednesday.
Director of Local Government for Bulawayo Metropolitan Province Tswagai Marovatsanga said the initiative was part of government efforts to establish clear service delivery standards as Zimbabwe works towards its Vision 2030 target.
She said the government had benchmarked its service delivery standards against countries that had attained upper-middle-income status.
On this topic
“In 2025, here in Bulawayo, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, on the Minimum Service Delivery Framework, set benchmarks in terms of service delivery across eight service delivery categories, namely water supply, sanitation management, corporate governance, solid waste management, housing and social amenities. We, as the Ministers of Zimbabwe, did a benchmarking exercise to study the economies that are already in the upper middle class. We did that exercise and it was quite rigorous and quite consultative. We then came up with the 2030 targets across those eight service delivery categories,” she said.
Marovatsanga said the government had also given legal effect to the service delivery targets through statutory instruments.
“Through the Minister of Local Government and Business, the Minister of Justice, as well as the Attorney General and his office, we promulgated statutory instrument Y70 of 2025, which set out targets and put into law targets for 2030 as well as targets for 2026. So every year, we will be promulgating a set of statutory instruments so that we set our standards for the following year. So for 2026 targets, we will be setting statutory instruments Y70 of 2025 last year in September,” she said.
She said targets for the following year would be introduced during the local authority budgeting period.
“For 2027, we will be setting targets sometime next month in September. Why is it September? Because this is the beginning of the local authority budgeting decision. This exercise will launch the performance contracting framework,” Marovatsanga said.
She said the performance contracting framework would assess the performance of local authorities, with residents playing a significant role in determining their scores.
“Under the performance contracting framework, this is a desk review with an image of ground truth in assessing the performance of MTAs, including local authorities. Under the citizens’ scorecard, we are going to have an input from these presidents. In fact, the score from citizens will carry more weight in the final scorecard,” Marovatsanga said.
The citizens’ scores will be combined with assessments from other government structures to produce an overall score for each local authority, she said.
“We are going to have best practices together with the Tripartite, OPC, Office of the President and Cabinet score, and then it will be triangulated and merged with the citizens’ score to get the final average score per local authority. We want to get insights, but also most importantly, aligned with all our increasing journey towards Vision 2030. We want residents to have the same in terms of policy tone and policy direction as we tend to in 2030,” Marovatsanga said.
She said the system would enable residents in different wards to assess the performance of their local authority.
“Remember we have 29 wards in Bulawayo, and for each ward we have residents. So we expect that each ward will have a scorecard that we can combine so that people can look into and see how a local authority can help them,” she said.
Representing the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution for Bulawayo, Judith Ncube, Secretary for Provincial Affairs and Devolution for Bulawayo Metropolitan Province Paul Nyoni said the digital platform demonstrated the government’s commitment to involving citizens in decision-making.
“This digital platform demonstrates our political commitment to building a government that listens, responds and strives for diversity and growth. This is a pillar of the devolution policy, where there is increased involvement in the decision-making by citizens on matters that affect them,” Nyoni said.
He said the scorecard would give residents an opportunity to provide feedback and assess the performance of their local authorities.
“The Citizens Engagement scoring platform is an instrument that empowers residents to actively participate in local governance by providing feedback on safety delivery, identifying safety gaps and evaluating the performance of their local locality in real time,” Nyoni said.
Nyoni said the information gathered through the platform should be used to improve engagement and service delivery rather than simply measure performance.
“There is no point in evaluating if we are going to move from zero to ten out of ten when we are not yet there. We need to use the data for engagement. Under the Common Action Blueprint, every local authority and public institution must put the citizens first,” he said.
He said local authorities should make quality service delivery a priority.
“Quality safety delivery must not be an afterthought. It must be maintained properly, around which our efforts are directed towards accelerated implementation of people-oriented projects. Through the minimum self-belief as standards, we must transform the core direction into concrete measures to reflect maps. Local authorities must therefore continue to provide quality services that reflect our national vision of becoming a prosperous and empowered upper middle-income society by 2030,” Nyoni said.
Nyoni said residents were increasingly demanding quality services and that the platform could help local authorities respond to those expectations.
“The expectations of our citizens, both individual and corporate, continue to grow, and rightly so. They deserve quality services that meet world standards and improve the quality of life. The introduction of this platform provides an opportunity to enhance technology in addressing these expectations,” he said.
He said technology, artificial intelligence and data analytics could help government make better decisions and improve resource allocation.
“The incorporation of artificial intelligence and data analytics will enable governments and local authorities to make informed decisions, improve planning, allocate resources more efficiently, and monitor savings to be made by them. This platform is not a fault-finding exercise,” he said.
Nyoni said the platform should instead be viewed as a management tool to help authorities identify problems and improve services.
“It is a professional management tool that allows local authorities to identify shortcomings early, correct mistakes, and continuously improve the quality of services delivered to our communities,” he said.
Representing Bulawayo Mayor David Coltart, Chairperson of the Health, Housing and Education Committee Councillor Ntombizodwa Khumalo said the platform would complement the city’s existing systems for receiving complaints and feedback from residents.
“This platform complements our already existing platform. As a city, we strive to become a transparent municipality in our governance systems. We are the first local authority to have a customer contact centre where residents and stakeholders can report their challenges with our customer contact centre,” Khumalo said.
She said the customer contact centre had been operating for years and received thousands of complaints, with water and sanitation among the main concerns raised by residents.
“Through our customer contact centre, we handle about 6000 calls a month, with most of the cases being on water and sanitation. These figures speak to the needs that we have as a city,” she said.
Khumalo said ageing water and sanitation infrastructure remained a major challenge, with the city working to rehabilitate it.
“Most of our water and sanitation infrastructure has uplifted its lifespan, and measures are ongoing to rehabilitate the infrastructure. For those who have accessed the Citizen Engagement Scorecard, it also touches on service delivery such as water, roads, and public lighting. These are the issues that we are aligned to as a city,” she said.
She said the city had been promoting the Citizen Engagement Scorecard on its social media platforms ahead of the official launch.
Khumalo urged residents and other stakeholders to provide honest feedback while considering their own responsibilities in using municipal services.
“While we are conducting this launch, we have been promoting the platform on our social media platforms for nearly a month now. As we write to the city of Bulawayo, I want to challenge the residents and stakeholders to be as honest and also introspect on how they must use municipal services. Writing to services provided by the city is also a process of rating ourselves as residents and stakeholders,” she said.
Leave a Reply