Chronicle Editor
BULAWAYO City Council (BCC) should urgently come up with strategies to improve revenue collection to enable it to execute its mandate of providing services to its ratepayers.
Council is struggling to meet its financial obligations as a result of declining revenue inflows as most of its ratepayers are not paying their bills.
The council is now owed close to a billion dollars hence the urgent need to come up with new strategies to improve revenue collection.
According to council, only 16 percent of ratepayers were paid up by end of last November and the situation could be worse now given that the arrears ballooned by $140 million in just two months this year.
The bulk of the defaulters are residents and as such councillors need to find ways of encouraging them to prioritise payment of council bills.
More than 50 percent of ratepayers should be paid up at any given time if council is to have adequate revenue to meet its financial obligations.
Under the new rates, residents in the western suburbs pay between US$15 and US20 a month which is not much compared to what residents used to pay during the multi-currency regime.
We want at this juncture to once again implore residents to prioritise the payment of council bills to enable council to fulfil its mandate to provide services such as water provision and collection of refuse.
Most residents that are now saddled with huge council bills have not bothered to pay their bills for months if not years. It is crucial for residents to strive to pay their bills every month to avoid accumulating arrears as is the case now.
Council on its part should revisit the project to introduce pre-paid water meters which have proved very effective for Zesa.
Residents cannot do without the precious liquid hence they will be forced to pay for water in advance.
Council has already asked defaulters to come up with payment plans and we urge residents to urgently engage council.
The city fathers should also seriously consider the proposal to introduce incentives such as discounts for ratepayers that pay their bills regularly.
There is also an urgent need to expand the revenue base to avoid relying on rates alone. We hope council now has an asset register to assist it to determine what it is getting from rentals. In the event it does not have one as has been the case for years, it could be losing millions of dollars from tenants that are not paying rentals because the properties they are leasing are not in the council books.
There are also cases of tenants paying ridiculously low rentals because the rentals have not been reviewed for years. We want to once again urge council to take action to address its dwindling revenue inflows as this is negatively affecting service delivery.
Online Reporter