Tears of a ward representative

Case

Mrs. Eliza Mtemi1 represents one of the 22 wards of the urban Ilala Municipal Council in the Dar es Salaam Region. Mrs. Mtemi was an education officer and has served in districts in several regions of Tanzania. At the end of her career she became head of the department of education of Kinondoni Municipality. Now she is retired. She was one of the first women to be elected in Ilala Municipal Council on her own merit.

Mrs. Mtemi is very unhappy with the way development projects are planned and managed. As a ward councilor she is the chairperson of the Ward Develop- ment Committee. This committee is responsible for developing projects that re- late to the ward and ensuring their implementation. However, she feels she can- not make decisions for her own ward because every plan has to be approved by the municipal council. Moreover, she has no authority over the council and ward officials and cannot influence the implementation of projects that are approved. The council has 22 wards and 120 streets, which it has failed to serve timely. She gives the example that, in the 2011/12 budget, the council approved six devel- opment projects for her ward and none of them were done. Underscoring the worst of the situation, she remarks that three streets in her ward depend on health services from the neighbouring two localities while the bridge between them is in disrepair. During rain seasons there is no connection between the two sides, thus the three streets suffer with poor access to health services. She has reported the matter to the head of the works department each year for the past three years, but the bridge has not yet been repaired. In 2014 she tabled the issue to the council committee responsible for public works, but the municipal executive director could not explain why the work had not been executed despite the fact that the council approved her proposal again in the 2012/13 budget. He just stated that central government had been slow in releasing the funds and that he himself de- cided which of the projects were the more urgent. Mrs. Mtemi suspects that some serious lobbying by councillors of other wards had been going on. Moreover, she

complains that council officials implement plans without involving ward- and street-level governments. For example, they decided to demolish two buildings in her ward without involving her. The people affected tried their best to resist the demolition and blamed her for not defending them. She feels caught in between. Citizens expect her to listen to their complaints, act as a mediator between them and the municipal government, and table their problems to ward and council offi- cials for solutions but in practice it is almost impossible to influence the admin- istration in its day-to-day operations.

Mrs. Mtemi explains that the ward as an administrative unit supervises the collection of revenue as part of its jurisdiction. The ward- and street-level gov- ernments raise complaints about the status of revenue collections in their wards. According to current financial regulations, the ward collects taxes if the levy does not exceed 50,000 Tsh. Taxes with levies of over 50,000 Tsh are collected by council administrative officials (trading officers) and not ward officials. The regulations do not allow the ward to use its own revenues: the ward must submit collected revenues to the district of which the district retains 75%. These reve- nues are spent on the implementation of general council plans and not on the specific plans of the ward from which the revenues were obtained. She believes that revenue collection would be much more effective if the street level were to be involved. The leaders and officials working at the street level have lots of lo- cal knowledge and can locate the possible areas for increasing the revenue base. Moreover, the population would be much more motivated to contribute and the ward officials to collect if everybody knew that the revenues would be spent for the benefit of the ward.

Overall, the councillor is of the opinion that the municipal executive director has failed to implement the decisions of the full council. She wants more auton- omy for the wards, both to decide on development plans and projects and to se- cure their implementation. She also wants to be the decision maker regarding how to raise and spend revenues for the development of her own ward.

Questions

1. What is the picture that arises with respect to the actual roles of councillors and officials in policy development, decision-making, and policy implementa- tion?

2. With which of the three models discussed in this chapter does the actual divi- sion of labour between councillors and officials correspond?

3. How appropriate do you judge the roles played by councillors and officials? 4. What is your position with respect to the councillor’s claim for more autonomy