Harare City Councillors Accuse MPs Of Causing Confusion And Usurping Their Powers

HARARE City councillors have accused MPs of causing confusion and usurping their powers, tasking acting mayor Chris Mbanga to engage Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda over the “errant” legislators.

Angry councillors, debating during a full council meeting on Thursday, accused some MPs in Harare of being ignorant of their mandate.

Budiriro councillor Panganai Charumbira said MPs should know their jurisdiction and called for unity of purpose among stakeholders to deal with issues affecting communities.

“MPs are taking our jobs. Council workers are afraid of MPs and if you wanted to be a councillor, why did you stand as MP then?” Charumbira queried.

“They don’t know their roles and that they are policymakers. Some of them lie on television if you watch a televison programme Constituency Watch and take glory for things they did nothing on.”

He said there was a “crisis of ignorance” and requested acting town clerk Josephine Ncube that she should not take orders from MPs.

Councillor Wilton Janjazi said MPs were busy dishing out land to churches and urged them to adhere to their Parliamentary role.

“MPs should not allocate church land. They should stick to their business and allow council to do its job. We don’t want to fight our MPs, but let them stay in Parliament,” he said.

Councillors were debating the issue of mushrooming churches which were allocated land without council authority as it emerged that some MPs were responsible.

Other councillors later told NewsDay that they were having problems with MPs interfering with their work and changing standards they would have set.

By Moses Matenga. source-newsday