THE latest 2023 Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) audit report on local authorities has left many Zimbabweans appalled by the gross irregularities and incompetency in many councils nationwide. These include poor revenue collection, inadequate debt management, compromised governance structures, ineffective procurement procedures, and asset mismanagement.
Addressing these issues is critical in complementing the central government's efforts to improve and achieve sustainable development goals. As such, the column seeks to analyse the latest report.
Key audit findings
Local authorities are not submitting their financials to the OAG for auditing on time. Of the 92 local authorities in Zimbabwe, only 19 had up-to-date financials as of December 2023, slightly up from only 17 up-to-date financial statements submitted in 2022.
Many local authorities received adverse audit opinions. Of the 98 financial statements audited, about 60% of AG’s opinions were adverse, with only two clean audit opinions. This shows that local authorities’ financial statements are grossly misrepresented, misstated, and inaccurate.
Local authorities are not seriously attempting to implement OAG audit recommendations. Of the 533 audit findings reported in the 2020-2022 annual reports, about 71,29% were unaddressed. This undermines the value of public sector auditing in promoting sustainable development.
Governance irregularities topped the chart, up 36,69% from 139 issues reported in 2022 to 190 in 2023. These include weak internal controls over inventory, cash management, absence of bank reconciliations, unsupported adjustments, and incomplete records.
There is rampant diversion of devolution funds by many local authorities. The funds are not used for their intended purposes or are not properly managed and accounted for.
- 2023 audit report: Local authorities systems rotten
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Most local authorities have limited knowledge of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). Yet, these standards are vital in improving governance, transparency, and accountability within the public sector.
Implications of report findings
Public sector auditing is fundamental in ensuring service delivery by directly addressing citizens' rights, including access to affordable and quality healthcare, housing, clean and safe water, education, and social security as guaranteed by the International Bill of Rights.
Revenue management
Effective domestic resource mobilisation demands maximum efforts invested in revenue generation to enhance the attainment of sustainable development.
Countries, such as Rwanda, have invested in tax administration to mobilise revenue, and it is no surprise that it is the only country that has achieved the Millennium Development Goals.
However, the latest audit report indicated that most local authorities in Zimbabwe are poorly managing their revenues. For instance, many LAs did not keep beer levy reconciliations or verifications of sales made by commercial brewers, and they have inadequate billing, metering challenges, and capacity limitations. Consequently, this negatively impacts their financial stability, thus constraining service delivery.
Generally, proper financial practices, as well as addressing revenue collection problems, are critical steps toward sustainable governance.
Access to water
Section 77 of the Zimbabwe constitution obligates the government to provide clean, portable, and safe water for the people. This constitutional provision solidifies the fact that water is life. As such, the failure of local authorities to provide water to citizens, as highlighted in the 2023 OAG audit report, is an apparent disregard for the supreme law of the land and an utter violation of the right to human dignity.
Despite this constitutional provision, many communities, urban and rural alike, lack access to clean water more than 40 years after attaining independence. These local authorities, particularly in urban areas, fail to expand water infrastructure, repair broken pumps and meters, replace aging water distribution networks, and curtail illegal connections and vandalism.
Yet, rural-to-urban youth migration seeking greener pastures has drastically increased urban populations. This explains the frequent outbreaks of medieval diseases like cholera and typhoid in overpopulated cities, thereby causing avoidable loss of life.
Poor provision of clean and safe water by local authorities is also perpetuating inequalities, particularly for the girl child in marginalised communities who are attending class fatigued after walking long distances fetching water for household use.
The intensity of unpaid care work faced by rural women and girls is inconsistent with Zimbabwe’s aspirations under Vision 2030.
Access to education
The latest 2023 OAG report on local authorities has unleashed the public education sector's grave challenges. This is a critical sector as it sustains the majority of the population, especially the underprivileged families.
Local authorities are crucial in the public education sector value chain, controlling 65% of total schools in Zimbabwe, disaggregated as RDCs (63%) and city councils (2%).
However, local authorities’ investment into the education sector to expand education infrastructure, such as classroom blocks, is inadequate, leading to hot seating arrangements.
The 2023 OAG report on local authorities has shown a problem of lack of adequate and quality education infrastructure, a situation complicating the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability of education to people with low incomes.
For instance, the report highlighted that infrastructure at the Chikomba Rural District Council’s Northwood Primary School was inadequate as the school had only 12 instead of 28 classrooms based on an enrolment of 961 students.
Such revelations align with the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd) survey results, which confirmed a massive decline in school infrastructure in rural Gokwe, where over 82% of the schools require extensive renovations, including new roofing.
With tightening university entry requirements (like 15 points at A’ Level), poor provision of basic education by local authorities is disproportionately crowding out learners from rural areas, thus trapping disadvantaged groups into a vicious cycle of poverty where poverty seems to be the cause and effect of poverty.
Access to health care
Health is the foundation of productivity and happiness; everything else in life builds on top of it. From an economic perspective, a healthy population helps create a productive workforce and strengthens the country in many economic spheres.
Accordingly, Zimbabwe's constitution provides universal access to health care under Section 76. As such, local authorities are expected to deliver affordable and accessible state-of-the-art healthcare infrastructure and services. These are crucial as they allow citizens to realize their potential and play an essential role in social and national development.
Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that local authorities are lagging in building health infrastructure consistent with the demands of the 2021st century, as flagged by the 2023 OAG audit report on local authorities.
For instance, Chivi Rural District and Kadoma City Council still do not have any ambulance servicing their clinics in their respective districts.
Also, one of Mutare City Council’s clinics was not registered with the Ministry of Health and Child Care, consequently failing to receive drugs from the National Pharmaceutical Company.
All these irregularities compromise the accessibility, adaptability, and availability of health care for residents.
Environmental protection
It is an undeniable fact that the environment is critical to the promotion of sustainable development. A healthy, clean, and safe environment is fundamental in enabling people to live a life of dignity. Against this background, even section 4(1) of Zimbabwe’s constitution provides that ‘every person shall have a right to a clean environment that is not harmful to health’.
Thus, local authorities have a constitutional obligation to carry out their activities in a manner that does not harm the environment.
However, the 2023 OAG report established that many local authorities' actions harm the environment. These actions include poor maintenance of drainage systems and culverts, allocation of stands in wetlands, sewer bursts and spillages, and poor solid waste management.
The degradation of the environment creates life-threatening hazards, inhibits rapid response to emergencies, and causes the extinction of species and biodiversity.
Summative evaluation
The 2023 OAG report findings, as discussed in the previous sections, have highlighted that local governments are partly to blame for poor service delivery.
However, the central government is also contributing to local authorities' poor performance. For instance, since the transfer of political administration of most urban councils from the ruling party to the opposition party, the Ministry of Local Government has increased its interference in local authorities' operations, demonstrating a lack of administrative autonomy.
Political interference is affecting local authorities' independence in discharging their mandates and sustaining land barons, fuelling illegal settlements in urban councils, as corroborated by the 2019 Justice Chena-led Commission of Inquiry into the sale of state land in and around metropolitan areas since 2005.
Therefore, without a whole-of-government approach and non-partisanship, improving service delivery and uplifting marginalised people out of poverty will likely remain an elusive goal for Zimbabwe.
- Sibanda is an economic analyst and researcher. He writes in his personal capacity. — [email protected] or X: @bravon96.
