Harare City Council staff members at Cleveland House are failing to benefit from the virtual international training being offered under its twinning arrangement with the city of Munich in Germany because of the lack of internet connectivity.
This was revealed by Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume while reading notices during the 1918th ordinary full council meeting on Wednesday.
Mafume said he received a letter dated March 28 from Munich’s Department of Labour and Economic Development about the lack of an internet connection. Part of the letter read:
The absence of an internet connection at Cleveland House has affected the training of staff officers by the Munich development advisor who is based at Cleveland House since the training is done virtually.
… May you kindly ask the worship Mayor Mafume to look into this issue as it is slowing some of the good projects that we are working on. We are looking forward to your feedback before April 17, 2023.
Mafume claimed that there was serious corruption in the council’s IT department. He said:
The IT department is never going to work; they are concentrating on corruption. There is an addiction to corruption of immense appetite.
We do not have internet at the office here (in Town House). We hardly have the internet.
We don’t have internet at Cleveland House, for functions of the city we are still operating on a manual basis yet we have one of the biggest IT departments.
NewsDay reported that 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.
The City of Munich has in the past assisted Harare with medical supplies. Businesspeople from that city donated a generator to power the Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital.
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