The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance, and Economic Development has commended Bulawayo residents for turning out in their numbers for the 2020 national budget consultation meeting held in the city on Tuesday.
The committee which is this week doing nation-wide consultations on next year’s budget has teams two teams, one covering Manicaland and the four Mashonaland provinces and the other covering the Masvingo, Midlands and the three Matabeleland provinces.
Leader of the southern region team, Hwange East legislator Tose Sansole, told CITE he was impressed with the response from Bulawayo.
“I am quite happy with Bulawayo; very happy actually,” said Sansole.
“In Bulawayo, the response has been very good. I think the Members of Parliament did a good job of talking to the councillors who then informed the people. We also got good representation from the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association.”
Sansole said resident associations play a key role in disseminating information.
“I am not disappointed with the Bulawayo turnout at all compared to other hearings that we have had.
The committee has been to Plumtree and Masvingo.
“Masvingo was also good. Plumtree not so good. Perhaps we need to do more awareness there,” he said.
“Perhaps in addition to advertising in the newspapers we need to go through the councillors because those are the people who live with people in the communities. They can go to their wards and make people aware that there is a budget consultation meeting going on there,” suggested Sansole.
Some of the issues brought before the committee included the two percent tax on electronic transactions, which residents said it was no longer serving its purpose, the need to implement devolution of power to provinces, addressing of the critical power challenges, allocating more resources to the troubled health sector, among other related factors.
