By McDonald Chipenzi
SUSPENSION OF THE TWO CITY COUNCILS AND THEIR COUNCILORS: IS IT LEGAL?
I have been receiving queries on whether or not the Minister of local government is in order to have suspended the two Councils and their Councilors for three months for alleged illegal allocation of land in their respective councils.
My response has been a categorical YES, it is legal and within the jurisdiction of the Minister’s powers and authority since councils discharge delegated powers from central government.
My thrust of my response and support to the minister’s decision is founded in Section 56 of the Local government Act 2 of 2019.
Section 56 states:
“The minister may, by reason of the refusal, failure or inability of a council to adequately perform all or any of its functions, by statutory order suspend all Councilors of the council from performing all their functions as Councilors and empower the Local government administrator to discharge all the functions of the council…”
Section 57 further guides; “an order made by the minister under section 56 shall, unless revoked, expire after 90 days of the date of making the order, except that the minister may, in the interest of local administration, extend the order for further periods of 90 days at a time”
Therefore, the Minister is in order to suspend the Kitwe and Lusaka City councils and Councilors and appoint an administrator.
However, this must be an eye opener that the above provisions go contrary to the current constitution provisions under Art 152(2) which states that;
“The national government and the provincial administration shall not interfere with or compromise a local authority’s ability or right to perform its functions.”
The above provision in Art 152(2), as a result, is proposed to be repealed by Bill 10 which will now give the central and provincial administrations more and an open check to interfere or/and compromise local authorities’ abilities or rights to perform their functions.
I hope u now understand why we are against the dead Bill 10.
I submit