City Of Harare | WASH programme will improve service delivery

Harare’s 2022 budget which mainly concentrates on the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes is expected to improve service delivery in other sectors, Acting Budgets Head Mrs Takatadzeyi Musere has said. Mrs Musere was speaking during a stakeholder engagement with stakeholders over the City’s 2022 budget which was meant to debunk a lot of misinformation that has been spreading through various media channels. “We are hoping that since a significant amount of money will come through the inter-governmental fiscal transfers this will help us to prop up the water sector as well as the sanitation sector. “The tariff from the water sector is an equity based and it allows for full cost recovery and you will note that the tariff for water for 2022 has gone down because of the inter-governmental fiscal transfers that we are going to get from government,” she said. She said the city is expecting that interventions that will be undertaken under capital budget non-revenue water will be reduced from the current 62 percent to 58 percent. “We have an outcome for the WASH programme which is improved water sanitation and hygiene. We are hopeful that if we undertake the implementation of capital projects in the water sector it will contribute to sustained service delivery,” she said. Musere said that Council will fail to achieve its targets if it fails to meet its revenue targets. “As I alluded to earlier on that 55 percent of the budget is funded by own revenues and 45 percent from other sources, It means that if we fail to perform in collecting own revenues the capital budget will be underfunded. “We are also banking on the 45 percent which is from loans and inter-governmental fiscal transfer if they do not come through the budget will be underfunded,” she said. She said Water treatment chemicals remain primarily priced in US dollar and therefore will be directly affected by the prevailing exchange rate.