CITIZENS Coalition for Change (CCC) leader, Nelson Chamisa, has vowed to reverse some government measures, which he said were destroying and suffocating local authorities.
Chamisa, who is vying for the number one seat in the upcoming presidential elections this year, said some ministerial directives by the Zanu Pf led government were choking life out of councils.
"Central government is destroying and suffocating local authorities through ministerial directives, corruption, procurement, land barons, partisan staff recruitment and non implementation of devolution as per the constitution. This we will change," said Chamisa via Twitter.
Local authorities have been in the eye of the storm for failing to deliver basic services such as refuse collection and tapped water.
The current rains have also exposed how dilapidated the state of the drainage system is in most cities.
Council officials, however, blame government for interfering with their operations.
In 2022, Harare City Council, through its special meeting, tried to ward off a waste management contract that had been entered between government and Geogenix BV, a foreign company whose local representative is Delish Nguwaya, a business associate of President Emmerson Mnangagwa's family.
The squabble later on entailed court sessions while the ministry of local government later wrote to the Harare City Council ordering the local authority to pay up the Pomona dumpsite bill that had ballooned to close to a million United States dollars.
Government reportedly forced the costly waste-to-energy-deal on the local authority and it later emerged that council was supposed to pay US$22,000 per day to the contracted company for the next 30 years.
Meanwhile, the opposition-controlled city council has since declared that it would not honour the contract despite local government minister, July Moyo, insisting that the deal was irreversible.
The Pomona deal drew a lot of criticism from residents associations and civil society groups for weighing down on already burdened rate payers.
