adminThe Herald, July 1, 1996
AN Avondale woman recently passed out when she received a shocking $638 287,57 water bill for the month of May from the Harare City Council.
The woman who requested not to be named, regained consciousness when one of her domestic workers came to her rescue.
“I was obviously shocked to receive such a ridiculous bill. Fortunately, the person I dealt with at Rowan Martin offices was extremely helpful. He immediately acknowledged that there was an error and he corrected it,” said the woman.
The Herald understands that Council is being flooded with queries of huge bills from Harare residents who of late have been receiving unusually huge water statements. The huge bills have been attributed to a computer error.
Last week, a group of Ruwa residents, mainly women, picketed the local board offices, seeking an explanation on how they had accumulated huge water statements. The residents said they were shocked to receive huge water bills for the months of April and May. Some had bills totalling almost $13 000, while the majority were being asked to pay between $400 and $7 000 in water charges.
The local board authorities have said the huge water bills had been caused by computer errors.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Harare City Council’s billing system has always been chaotic and undermines the city’s revenue collection. It service delivery competence compromises ratepayers.
It is not surprising to see ratepayers from time-to-time, receiving bills with shocking amounts due to the shambolic nature of the billing system.
GIGO is computer parlance for “garbage in; garbage out”. There is no way that both Harare and Ruwa could experience data inputting problems at the same time. Employees do that with the hope that residents would blindly pay the huge bills.
Some Harare City Council employees are manipulating the loopholes in the billing system to swindle rate payers of their hard earned cash.
Online Reporter