Kitwe City Council Institutional profile

“Community meetings are open to all residents irrespective of their sex and also in their planning process and service delivery activities, women are engaged during these public meetings. ”

Kitwe City council is relatively new to the Center of Excellence process having been adopted in 2012. Hence not much has been done in terms of mainstreaming gender in the action plan.

In terms of representation at the political level there are very few women at 6 councillors compared to the 22 male councillors. All contributions during council meetings are considered on merit but male always dominate the discussions. However from interviews conducted by Gender Links with Beatrice Kabwe one of the three female councillors highlighted that their participation in council meetings and other gatherings are notable and that are also very influential at ward level. Their participation has greatly proved the need of having more women in decision making positions especially at community level.

“People in my community are highly expectant of me; they expect I will provide immediate solutions to their problems such as money, or homes for orphans in the community. It is difficult to meet some their demands especially that I am just a servant with no form of allowance or stable remuneration from the government. I am expected to be in place whenever they need me and when an emergency arises but I have no vehicle or money to travel all the time. However, I am not discouraged by all this instead I delegate some of these duties to women and youths in the church who are willing to help their own. I engage them on various levels of responsibilities and keep them motivated by inviting them to high level meetings that I attend such as at the council or with political figures and sometimes just by acknowledging their efforts by mentioning them in public speeches, reads an excerpt from Kabwe’s interview.

Community meetings are open to all residents irrespective of their sex and also in their planning process and service delivery activities. Women are engaged during these public meetings as they are the majority in attendance. The participation from the women is overwhelming especially in markets. However, no records are kept regarding public meetings. Statistics though disaggregated manually they are proper system of electronic filling and database.

The council has no procurement policy but they do have a tender committee which has guidelines on tender procedures under the Zambia Public Procurement Authority. These guidelines are not gender sensitive and there is no deliberate affirmative action to promote women in getting tenders. However a few women have benefited from some of the stands allocated by the city council.

Council do not have an institutional housing policy but is guided by the national housing policy. On land there is a deliberate policy and affirmative action that regulates that 30% of land be given to women and 70% competed.
The council does have a workplace policy on HIV/AIDS and they do run awareness campaigns. However the policy is now dated and need to be revised. In the campaign materials there is an inclusion of gender aware messages and slogans. Female condoms are distributed widely within the council.

Although the council is aware about the climate change effects there has not been an actual implementation to mitigate this. The council is in charge of the karate, football facilities and a library which are accessed by both men and women but there are no sex disaggregated data kept for the use of the facilities.
The council is involved in gender specific activities but not very active and there is no budget line to effectively implement these activities.

There is no action plan for addressing GBV in the council, GBV issues are dealt with by the VSU of the Zambia Police. To make public places safer for women the council has street lights in the townships and 85% of the streets are named.
There are 947 members of staff in the council establishment and 616 are men while 331 % are female. In each department there are more men than women find below the departmental break down of staff. However ,women and men are given equal opportunity for growth within the council and have equal access to training and promotion opportunities a few number of women who are currently studying have been earmarked to take up management positions.

The council provide equal benefits for women and men, including maternity leave, men do not have paternity leave but are encouraged to take leave. Paternity leave is indicated in the conditions of service but men rarely take the leave. Sexual harassment is also part f the human Resource policy though it is not being reinforced by the council.
The council has appointed a gender focal point person but there is no budgetary allocation and there is no policy to affirm this structure. The budget is not gender responsive though there has been some instruction from the ministry of finance to make our budgets gender responsive.

The council has no monitoring and evaluation department, no gender indicators put in place for planning and human resource management.

they are the majority in attendance.”