LOCAL Government Association of Zambia (LGAZ) president Mulenga Sata has urged councils across Zambia to promote a clean and green environment to enable the local authorities become attractive.
Mr Sata said there was need for councils to plant more trees and use solid waste to generate sustainable energy for street lightening and other projects.
He was speaking in Livingstone yesterday in an interview at Chrismar Hotel at the closing of the 58th LGAZ annual conference and 11th Alliance of Mayors and Municipal Leaders Initiative for Community Action on AIDS at the Local Level (AMICAALL).
The five-day conference was held under the theme “50 years of Local Government, Treasuring the past, reflecting the present, shaping the future.”
“We need to plant more trees. For instance, the land is almost bare and brown if you fly over Lusaka. We also need to use solid waste to generate power as well as keep our cities clean and embrace sustainable energy whether energy saving bulbs or solar energy,” Mr Sata said.
[pullquote]We need to plant more trees. For instance, the land is almost bare and brown if you fly over Lusaka.[/pullquote]
Mr Sata, who was chairing the LGAZ conference for the first time since he was elected as president, said there was need for councils to move away from total dependence on ZESCO power saying there was a lot of room for sustainable energy in the country.
The Lusaka City Council Mayor said the lifespan of solar batteries was much longer while the cost was also low.
Mr Sata also said councils were currently repositioning themselves for the implementation of the decentralisation policy as more responsibilities that would come along.
“As councils, we can do much better in terms of enhancing service delivery than what we are doing now.
In Kafue, they collected revenue from the quarry which is a challenge in other councils. Markets are on paper but the revenue doesn’t tally.
Meanwhile, Mr Sata has called for the localisation of the Local Government Service Commission (LGSC) operations.
“It will be important to localise the operations of LGSC so that councils that have human resource capacity can take charge of own recruitment.
For Lusaka City Council, anything from a cashier upwards is employed by LGSC and we have over 2, 000 workers and this becomes a challenge for the Commission to manage these workers,” Mr Sata said.
He said LGAZ did not want an adversarial relationship with LGSC but wanted a collaborative relationship with the Commission and the Ministry of Local Government and Housing.
Mr Sata said there was an urgent need to fight corruption and other mal-practices in councils across the country.
“As councils, we have not represented ourselves very well and we are trying to tighten our loopholes.
In Copperbelt Province, a councillor was suspended for engaging in illegal land dealings and we want this discipline to continue,” Mr Sata said.
