Action Aid Zimbabwe (AAZ), a social justice movement, will host a three-day Tax and Gender Responsive Public Services Summit (GRPS) from the 30th of August to the 1st of September this year, where stakeholders will unpack the state of service delivery in the country in the context of its failures to be gender responsive.
As a precursor to the summit, AAZ will host an online meeting to be live-streamed on 263 Chat digital platforms next week, Monday.
The Summit will bring together civil society actors, researchers, policy makers and duty bearers to interrogate the current state of public service provision in the country and Interrogate how the tax system can be used to improve GRPS provision in Zimbabwe.
It will also brainstorm and recommend ways to improve public service provision and make them gender responsive, especially in critical sectors of health, education and water, using domestically mobilized resources.
“The provision of public services is continuously taking a nosedive with a rise in privatization and lack of prioritization of public services on the national purse. To the extent that these services are being provided, these studies have further reviewed that they are less gender responsive,” said AAZ.
The deteriorating state of service provision in Zimbabwe has been caused by a combination of poor domestic resource mobilization and inequitable distribution, corruption in public sector, low budget allocation towards essential services and slow implementation of the devolution agenda.
The country’s tax systems remain weak and prone to evasion, a development that has robbed the national purse of substantial revenue.
While every citizen is negatively affected by poor service delivery, studies have shown that women and girls are the worst affected.
For instance, women and girls are walking very long distances to reach their nearest water points due to inadequate water infrastructure. Communities have to walk over 2km to reach their nearest health care facilities, and children have to walk long distances to reach the nearest Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres.
“This has further piled the burden of UCW on women and children reducing their productive time and hence lessening their access to economic opportunities,”
“The government of Zimbabwe at all levels, local to central, must ensure that revenue raised from taxation is used to progressively finance the provision of quality gender responsive public services,” said AAZ.
The series will be inclusive to everyone as 263Chat will facilitate the creation of various interactive platforms such as Whatsapp groups where members of the public can send their questions to the respective ministries for deliberation.
