Harare fails to pay for Internet services

Zim Now Writer

Harare City Council staff are failing to hold virtual trainings while councillors are failing to download minutes of past meetings following the local authority’s failure to pay for Internet and data services.

The City’s Mayor, Jacob Mafume, made the shocking revelations during a full council meeting yesterday.

The mayor said he received a letter dated March 28 from the department of labour and economic development of the City of Munich, with whom Harare has a twinning arrangement, about the lack of Internet connectivity.

“The absence of Internet connection at Cleveland has affected the training of staff officers in Munich. This is unacceptable because everywhere now there is Internet, even in lodges, they now provide Wi-Fi,” he said.

His counterparts in Germany, Mafume said, had given him an April 17 deadline to address the issue.

Harare and Munich have held exchange programmes that have seen councillors and staff from the two cities paying reciprocal visits to learn and exchange best practices.

It also emerged that councillors have not accessed minutes of several sub-committee meetings because they failed to download the documents.

The City of Munich has in the past assisted Harare with medical supplies while businessmen from that city donated a generator to power the Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital.

The twinning arrangements are meant to help both cities in the area of tourism, exchange of information and expertise in urban planning, architecture, municipal improvements, transport, communications and urban governance and culture.