The Bulawayo City Council(BCC) plans to live-stream it’s monthly chamber meetings, events, and other functions. The town clerk Christopher Dube feels that social media’s impact gives citizens a voice they did not have before. The council intends to use not only the live-streams but also Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to interact with residents. A date has not been set but they intend to start doing this in the near future.
Why are they doing this?
BCC wants to embrace a culture of openness and accountability. This also gives citizens a simple way to inquire about products, report faults along with good and bad service.
A positive step
The initiative seems to be a step in the right direction.The general feeling around the country for a long time has been that the councils do not make any efforts to connect with their citizens. Live-streaming is council meetings is a good move. The move by the BCC will certainly increase the interaction between citizens and their council. Hopefully, it will also increase efficiency and accountability within the BCC.
Hopefully, this encourages other councils to imitate this move and adopt similar technologies in order not to be left behind. I’m sure all citizens will be willing to have better platforms that enable them to reach their respective councils. We would love to hear what you think about BCC’s move in the comments below.
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3 comments
I think it’s a good move. interacting with the people who give them the money for the services. well-done BCC for pioneering such an innovation in Zimbabwe!
Can they just stop covering potholes with soil and build proper roads ,They can livestream later
probably the idea behind Live-streaming is so that your can give them just such feedback… And at least now they won’t have any excuse for service delivery since residents have more platforms to air out their grievances.. We will see how it goes though.