Zimbabwe’s local authorities continue to struggle with poor
financial controls, weak governance and deteriorating service delivery despite
recording an improvement in audit outcomes and the submission of financial
statements, the Auditor-General (AG) has said.
In her 2025 report on local authorities, the AG, Vimbai
Chikwnhere, said governance failures remained the most widespread challenge,
while service delivery weaknesses had worsened significantly across councils.
“There was a slight improvement in Local Authorities
that received unqualified/clean opinion from two to eight in the current
year,” she said.
“However, the majority continued to receive modified
opinions for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 due to inability to adjust for
misstatements on the opening balances, valuation of property, plant and
equipment, non-inclusion of schools in segment reporting, incomplete records
and other deficiencies.”
The report shows that out of 94 audit opinions issued, only
eight were clean opinions, while 51 were qualified, 30 adverse and five
disclaimers.
Although councils made progress in submitting outstanding
financial statements, with 58 local authorities now current compared to 26 last
year, 34 councils had still not submitted their 2025 financial statements by
the reporting deadline.
The AG warned that late submission of accounts “creates
accountability gaps and also results in the inability of local authorities to
provide supporting documents or reconcile variances identified during the
audit.”
Governance issues accounted for 245 of the 367 findings
raised during the audits, representing 67 percent of all reported weaknesses.
The report attributed the problems to poor asset management,
weak internal controls, incomplete records, poor cash management and the
continued failure by many rural district councils to account for schools in
their financial statements.
Chikwenhere also expressed concern over worsening service
delivery, saying the number of related findings rose sharply.
“Water, sewerage infrastructure and waste management
were not being upgraded to match the growth in population,” she said in the
report said.
“Most local authorities did not have engineered
landfills for disposal of solid waste and were using dumpsites against EMA
regulations. Council schools had inadequate infrastructure… Non availability
of ambulance services was another challenge.”
The report found that councils had made limited progress in
correcting past weaknesses. Of 634 audit findings tracked from previous
reports, only 240 had been fully addressed, while 327 remained unresolved.
“Concerted efforts from those charged with governance
is required to put in place measures to address reported weaknesses in order to
enhance transparency, accountability, good corporate governance and service
delivery,” the AG said.