By Correspondent
Government has outrightly approved only 23 out of 92 Local Authority budgets for 2024 presented to it.
This was revealed by the Minister of Local Government Winstone Chitando at a conference in Bulawayo on Thursday.
“There is more work to be done in a lot of budgets presented to us.
“In the next two weeks, you shall be getting the approval on budgets, but there are some that have been totally rejected while some are getting conditional acceptance.
“Out of the 92 Local Authority budgets the number which has been outrightly accepted is only 23.
“As I said the remainder are being totally rejected while others are conditionally accepted,” he said.
Chitando revealed that many failed to meet the basic standards of corporate governance.
A failure to remit statutory payments to relevant bodies such as NSSA, despite paying net salaries to workers, was also cited.
Other councils have also been accused of failing to pay their workers for the past 10 months.
Meanwhile some councils haven’t had their books audited since 2019.