Cash-strapped Masvingo City Council is owed $30 million in unpaid rates by residents and government institutions, it has emerged. The figure ballooned from $24 million last year.
By Tatenda Chitagu
According to council, as of last year, residents owed the local authority $10 million while the remainder of the money was owed by government departments.
“The debtors’ ledger to date is $30 million. The council had an average collection rate of 65,35% for billed services for the period under review,” reads the latest council minutes.
Masvingo mayor Hubert Fidze could not give a breakdown of what residents and government institutions owed as he was in a series of meetings the whole day together with town clerk Adolf Gusha.
However, Fidze recently told Southern Eye council was failing to deliver meaningful services to its 150 000 residents due to the debts.
Fidze attributed the huge debts to the liquidity crunch plaguing the country, but urged residents to come up with payment plans to settle their debts.
“Residents should come up with the little money they have and make a payment plan to avoid disconnections,” he said at the time.
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“For government departments, the situation is tricky because they are not forthcoming while sometimes we cannot force them to pay, but we will engage them.”
Local residents’ pressure group, The Masvingo United Residents and Ratepayers’ Association (Murra) urged the local authority not to target hapless residents in their water cuts, but to make the government institutions own up as well.
“The local authority should make government departments pay up as well than to just turn to poor residents and disconnect their water simply because they are easy targets,” Murra programmes co-ordinator Anoziva Muguti said.
Early this year, the MDC-T-dominated local authority resolved to reach a debt swap deal to enable it to settle tax arrears with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority totalling $5 million.
