BULAWAYO City Council has turned down a request by former mayor Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube for a 75% cancellation of the over $27 000 debt for a farm he is leasing from the local authority.
BY NQOBANI NDLOVU
Ndabeni-Ncube owes council $27 2663,31 as of September 2015, in unpaid bills to the local authority for his Lot 84 Essexvale Estate along Esigodini Road, measuring 1 200 hectares.
Between 2001 and 2008, Ndabeni-Ncube had pleaded for cancellation of his debt, arguing he could not afford to settle it, as he was a simple pensioner.
In February, Ndabeni-Ncube wrote a similar letter to council, pleading with the local authority to write off the debt and reduce his rental charges.
The council turned down his request, but gave him a 50% discount incentive similar to the one extended to the industry and commercial sector. The council also reduced his monthly rentals by 50%, from $300 to $150, excluding value-added tax.
Ndabeni-Ncube, in a follow-up letter to the council, said despite being offered a 50% discount and rental cuts, he was still battling to service the debt, and pleaded for a 75% write-off.
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“I am not even a commercial or professional farmer at that, but a simple person with some cattle like those villagers who graze their cattle at council farms,” he wrote in a letter dated April 28, 2015, according to the latest finance and development council committee report.
“My request was purely at a personal level and at that for one who worked for council and served council for 24 years but now an ordinary pensioner, whose financial pension base was totally eroded by the 2008/09 inflationary flow as we all know.
“That is why I asked for a special consideration as put forward in my request.”
He added: “Your worship and councillors, while I highly appreciate your noble gesture of the 50% cut in my debt, and which amount would still be choking to me as a pensioner, I am hereby further appealing to you, mayor and councillors, if my debt could be cut or reduced by 75% instead of 50%.
“I am also very much conscious of the fact that I must not have free services from council in as much as I am very much aware of and concerned about council’s hard financial times. Hence my special request.”
The matter was debated and it was resolved that his request be turned down, and instead his monthly rentals of $150 “be backdated to May 2009, with the corresponding accumulated interest charges reduced as per the adjusted balance”.
