Zimbabwe: Municipality of Chinhoyi – Economic Justice in education, training and economic development

The Chinhoyi community suggested a review of various tariffs. Budget consultation was a good practice since consultation involved men, women, youths and people with disability. The needs of everyone had to be incorporated in the budget. The project came up with a gender sensitive budget and by consulting them, stakeholders feel valued. Visits to every ward holding meetings with community members were made. Some meetings with the business community took place. Note taking note of the challenges they faced as far as council service delivery and operations was concerned was done.

The main objective of the project was to come up with a gender sensitive budget. The project aimed to identify the community’s needs and try as best as it could to address the local authority’s shortcomings in serving the community. Areas of excellent service delivery also were taken note of so as to strive and maintain the good work rates. To achieve the above objectives, the local authority first advertised the intentions on why they needed to carry out the budget consultative initiative. Religious leaders, politicians, business fraternity, youths and ordinary citizens were all incorporated during the consultations. Some feedbacks to the council’s finance committee followed. All the stakeholders later inspected the budget proposal. It was later forwarded to the parent Ministry (Local Government) for approval. Implementation took place once the parent Ministry approved the budget.

46 246 (60%) women directly benefitted from the project fewer men 30 831 (40%) directly benefitted. Thus, a total of 77 077 direct beneficiaries were recorded. There were neither indirect no online beneficiaries from the project. The total budget for this project was was $45 000.

Attendance was quite encouraging and showed that the residents were taking the project on a serious note. All partners and stakeholders were in attendance for the budget review meetings. They also contributed immensely during the meetings and encouraged the local authority to closely monitor its budget for proper accountability. A proper analysis of the financial report was done by reputable internal and external auditors as requested by stakeholders and partners. A number of meetings were held appraising the residents association on the way forward, challenges being faced and how best they could be overcome. The local authority gave an ear to the residents association’s ideas and suggestions on solving the challenges. Media coverage was always done during such consultative and meetings. The project design allowed regular formal and informal feedback across all sections and remained in place throughout the life of the project and beyond.

The lack of understanding on the budgetary process was a big hindrance to the smooth flow of budget consultative process meetings. That was overcome by sensitising the community on the budget formulation processes. Initially low residents’ turnouts were witnessed but through the scheduling of meetings at convenient times it was a thing of the past. The community had more time to socialise since they were relieved of the household duties such as fetching water from long distances considering that water was in their homes. The council decided to have women taking up influential positions in their sub committees as they were more affected with social challenges than men. For example women had to face the household chores like cooking on a daily basis unlike their male counterparts. Through involvement of men, women, youths and other personalities in the gender based budget, residents came to pay their monthly bills on time since they were getting water and other services efficiently. It resulted in improved revenue collection.

Communities’ total engagement was the way to the success realised by the council. The community felt to be the real owners of the project. By so doing, the residents put their best efforts in council activities.

The local authority maintained consistency on the areas it was excelling and took some corrective measures on where it was underperforming. Gender based budget consultations were maintained by the council and it proved to be a worthwhile exercise. Allocated resources during gender budget consultations were implemented as per the agreed figures.