By Paul Nyathi|The ruling ZANU PF intends to use its two thirds parliamentary advantage to amend the constitution in order to accommodate President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s unconstitutional Ministers for Provincial Affairs.
Authorities are crafting the Provincial and Metropolitan Councils Bill, which will be tabled before the Ninth Parliament.
Justice, Legal and parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi told weekend state media that an amendment to the Constitution was inevitable.
He said: “The way (Provincial and Metropolitan Councils) are structured at the moment, all the Honourable MPs within the province sit in the Provincial Councils with all the chiefs and Provincial Councilors.
“You sit there in Parliament, you allocate a budget to the Provincial Council, you go back to the province and sit in the Provincial Council and determine how the budget you allocated is used. Then you go back to Parliament and play an oversight role to things that you have been doing.
“So, perhaps it is one area that I believe the Minister of Local Government will be able to tackle and bring it to us so we look at how we can amend the Constitution and deal with that.
“It’s just not appropriate … These are some of the issues that need cleaning up, forget about the Provincial Ministers.”
He said a law was being crafted to facilitate operations of Ministers of State in the devolved governance system.
Ziyambi said the role that the Provincial Ministers will ensure the economic development of the provinces a role which the constitution spells out for the provincial council chairpersons.
“In fact Provincial Ministers are actually going to enhance the devolution because they will be key critical players in ensuring that they help in the growth of the provincial GDPs,” said Minister Ziyambi.
“Their thrust now won’t be to do with political activities but to look into the economic activities of the province, particularly how to grow the economy of the province.
“We are going to come up with enabling legislation that will give effect to the Provincial Councils. This legislation will spell out the interaction and the work of Provincial Ministers of State will do to enhance the devolution agenda.
“Devolution is some form of decentralisation; we have decentralisation of governmental powers already. But we want to go a step further and have each province manage its own affairs and the Provincial Minister will work towards ensuring that the province grows its economy. So there will be no interference at all.”